Sunnyvale, California

In Sunnyvale, California, the median home value is very high. It’s $1,945,500, just a shade below $2 million. A statistic that is also astounding is that the value of homes in the last year has risen 27.1% in Sunnyvale. A prediction has been made that in the following year, the worth of houses in Sunnyvale will increase by 9.9 percent.

These kind of increases can make it extremely difficult for many aspiring homeowners to enter the housing market in Sunnyvale. You need to have serious savings and/or very high income to qualify.

A big challenge is how do you form a plan to save money to buy a home in Sunnyvale with big increases in home values? The answer is that you need a savings plan that makes room for increases in the value of homes.

Of course if you are trading up from a lower valued home in Sunnyvale to a higher valued home, you could possibly have a very good advantage.

Also keep in mind that there will be a market top at some point. That is the nature of real estate cycles. If real estate prices drop rapidly, it would be a tremendous advantage for buyers.

Getting back to Sunnyvale real estate numbers, per square foot, the list cost median is $1,018. The Metro Area of San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara has a much lower per square foot list cost median. It’s $696.

For houses listed presently in Sunnyvale, CA, $1,499,888 is the house cost median. $1,533,600 is the house cost median of houses that have been sold.

$3,950 is the rent cost median in Sunnyvale. The Metro Area of San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara Metro has a lower median rent cost which is $3,685.

The foreclosure rate is an important number when it comes to the economics of real estate. A very high foreclosure rate will bring the value of homes down. A very low foreclosure rate will bring the value of houses up. The higher the foreclosure rate in a location, the lower the value of homes in that location.

For every 10,000 homes in the city of Sunnyvale, 0.3 homes go through foreclosure. This is less than the foreclosure rate of the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara Metro Area which is 0.4. The United States has a much higher foreclosure rate of 1.6.

There is a first thing that occurs when a homeowner’s home is foreclosed. It is called mortgage delinquency. What is mortgage delinquency? It is something that happens when an owner of a house doesn’t make good on their mortgage payment.

For bankers, mortgage delinquency is a serious matter. Why? It is because the homeowner may be short of money to pay their bills. And there is a point in numbers of missed mortgage payments, where banks will foreclose on a property.

Banks take a financial loss when their customers have foreclosures. There are many banks that have gone bankrupt and have closed due to a large number of foreclosures. In the 2008 recession, many banks went out of business because of a very large number of foreclosures.

The city of Sunnyvale has very low mortgage delinquency rate. It’s 0.2 percent. The national mortgage delinquency rate is 8 times higher. It’s 1.6 percent.

Another consequence of the 2008 recession is that the value of homes went down a greater amount than 20% in the United States. This was a huge amount of property devaluation.

With such a large fall in the value of homes, quite a few owners of houses are presently experiencing being underwater regarding their mortgages. What does it mean for a homeowner to be underwater regarding their mortgage? It means that the value of their home is less than the debt they have on their mortgage.

2.3 percent of homeowners in Sunnyvale are currently underwater when it comes to their mortgages. The Metro Area of San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara has a higher percentage of homeowners being underwater concerning their mortgages. It’s 2.8 percent.

Being underwater on a mortgage is a serious problem for many home owners. This is especially so for those homeowners who want to sell their home, but are financially struggling.

This is because to sell their home it is quite likely they will owe the bank money. But not only is it likely they will have to pay the bank money to sell their home, they will have other expenses.

In the following example, you can see that for someone underwater on their mortgage, it could be very expensive to sell their home. There is the fee to balance out the mortgage debt as well as other expenses.

Example:

1. A homeowner has a home valued at $300,000, but they have a mortgage debt of $340,000. This means that if they get full price on their house, they will have to pay the bank 40,000 to sell their house.

2. To sell their house they have a realty fee of 3 percent which is $9,000.

3. Upon inspection it is discovered that they have old electrical wiring. It is deemed unsafe and not up to code. The homeowner is required to get new electrical wiring to sell the home. The price is $8,000.

4. Miscellaneous expenses are $2,500.

So to sell their home, they will have to pay $40,000 + $9,000 + $8,000 + $2,500 = $59,500.

It is recommended that homeowners do what they can to avoid being in a situation in which they end up being underwater on their mortgage. For example, it may be wise not to get a second mortgage. And it could be very wise to put down a large down payment on the house when they purchase it.

The Median annual household income is $103,257 in the city of Sunnyvale CA.