- Tom BrezsnySilicon Valley and the Santa Cruz Market Part 2
Continuing the conversation ….. strolling down memory lane, looking at the Santa Cruz real estate market and how its relationship with Silicon Valley has changed over the last 30+ years.
We left off as the market was heading into 1996… Silicon Valley was on a hiring binge and HB-1 tech visas were maxed out. The entire Bay Area region was filling up with more new people coming from parts unknown.
All those people and jobs accelerated the market on both sides of the hill. Here on the coast, prices had already recovered from the steep downturn of the early 90s and now, fueled by the rush of new tech jobs, they were on a renewed trajectory upward.
As an agent, the mid 1990s market was one of my all-time favorites. Buyers and sellers were in good spirits, supply and demand were equally balanced and there was a fair amount of give and take in most transactions (unlike the lopsided, over-the-top sellers’ market of the last decade).
Best of all, a surprising number of home purchases were being made by first-time buyers who had landed good jobs over the hill and didn’t mind the drive. The surge in rookie homeowners was a boon to our local neighborhoods. All the new blood brought an infusion of sweat equity and pride of ownership in to transform some of the tired, old rental stock that had seen better days.
The downturn of the early 90s opened the window of affordability up to more deserving folks who had been priced out in the frenzy of the late 80s. If you bought your current home between 1993-1997, you were probably one of those people. But then… as Silicon Valley shifted into the hyper-drive of the dot.com era, the market also took off like a rocketship into a brave new world.
Even though everyone had said we’d never see another market with the intensity of the late 80s, they were wrong. Prior to the late 90s Santa Cruz had never really experienced multiple-offers. Maybe a few competitive situations here and there on select beach properties, but never an entire market that considered multiple offers a normal part of the process.
Santa Cruz prices had also never broken through the magic million dollar mark prior to 1997, but that changed too as we saw our first handful of single family home sales exceed that milestone. And as dot.com mania swung into high gear, so did our coastal market, as increasing numbers of young, 30-something tech entrepreneurs, flush with stock options burning holes in their pockets, began to scour neighborhoods by the beach.
Next week: The market on a crash course for Y2K
