The Los Gatos real estate market, found amidst the larger Santa Clara County and Bay Area housing markets, faced mixed signals in the most recent tracking period. Even as the median price rallied somewhat, the number of single-family houses sold decreased substantially compared to June 2009. Additionally, even expensive properties were beginning to be hit by the foreclosure crisis. According to a July 13, 2010 report from the Mercury News, “The foreclosure crisis, now well into its third year, has moved upscale as a growing share of people in homes worth at least a million dollars fall behind on their mortgage payments. Those upper-end houses accounted for nearly 6 percent of the notices of default — signifying the owner is three months or more behind on payments — sent out by lenders to Santa Clara County homeowners so far this year. In San Mateo County, about 4 percent of the million-dollar-plus houses received notices of default this year. The Santa Clara County numbers are up from 3.3 percent in 2008 and 5.2 percent last year. Job loss and mortgage debt began to crush the high end in 2009, when 811 valley homes worth a million dollars or more received default notices, according to an analysis of foreclosure data. That compares with 397 default notices in 2008 and 207 in 2007.”
The mixed picture for Los Gatos homes for sale as well as the Bay Area at large was reflected in a July 12, 2010 article from the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal. The piece noted that “The number of homes sold in the Bay Area from month-to-month in June but were down from a year ago, as a reduction in the number of foreclosure sales helped to boost the median price, according to a report released Thursday. MDA Dataquick reported a total of 8,373 homes closed escrows in the nine-county Bay Area, up 1.3 percent from 8,264 in May but down 3.1 percent from 8,644 in June 2009. The month-to-month increase was below the 3.9 percent average seasonal increase Dataquick has seen since it began reporting in 1988…The median paid for all new and resale houses and condos combined was $410,000, the same as in May and up 16.5 percent from $352,000 in June 2009. This marked the ninth straight increase in year-to-year median prices.”