San Jose Home Prices Hit $1.3 Million

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 2, 8:30AM EST

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San Jose Home Prices Hit $1.3 Million — © Sundry Photography / iStock via Getty Images

The home market may have softened in the past year. A tremendous ballooning of prices in most markets during the past two years and high mortgage rates have undercut the rate at which the home market has been soaring. In some markets, activity has slowed. In others, prices have started to fall. Despite these troubles, home prices in San Jose, the most expensive market in the United States, remain above $1.3 million. (Click here for the 10 cities where homebuyers make the highest down payments.)
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In Realtor.com’s “January Housing Report: Buyers Gain Bargaining Power but Remain Deterred by High Rates and Prices,” Danielle Hale, chief economist for Realtor.com, commented, “Home buying in January remained relatively sluggish as sales slowed, inventories rose, and price growth leveled off. These trends reinforce that while buyers are gaining an advantage in the market, they are still being deterred by high home prices and financing costs.”
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Realtor.com also mentions that stalled housing prices allowed some buyers to re-enter a market they left several months ago. One good measure of housing market strength is “median days on the market.” Last month, this figure was 75, up 13 days from a year ago.

Cities well above 75 were Austin (80), Las Vegas (80), San Antonio (80), Pittsburgh (87), New York (89), and Kansas City (90). Presumably, this has brought some bargains to the markets.
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The median listing price of a home for sale nationwide was $400,000, near an all-time high. Markets well above that were Los Angeles at $884,000, San Diego at $900,000, San Francisco at $972,000 and San Jose at $1,349,000.

San Jose has two signs of strength. The first is price. The other is median days on the market, which are only 55. Despite these home prices, demand is brisk.
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Perhaps San Jose has advantages because it is the wealthiest city in America. Residents’ income has been driven by tech company money and VC financers. Although some companies in these sectors have posted layoffs, tens of thousands of extremely rich people are still in the area.

San Jose is America’s most expensive housing market, and that will not change.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.