Prices in my current neighborhood in San Jose have declined since I started looking to buy in the areas I mentioned. My own house has lost 10% of its value this past year. However, I am in a lower market ($1M give or take, more take these days) so my potential buyers are more impacted by the subprime crises.

In the Los Altos/Los Altos Hills higher end market, prices have not moved down very much. In Los Altos, they have actually stayed flat or gone up a little. In Los Altos Hills they have gone down for sure, but by maybe 5% overall. What you are seeing, is homes in LAH stay on the market a lot longer than Los Altos. That is becasue those homes are more expensive and “unique” than those in Los Altos. But, inventory is very low in both markets, which means that the really nice well priced homes are moving and getting multiple offers.

For you folks in SD, homes up here tend to be old and not updated so when you find one that is newer or updated, people act like they just saw a shooting star and quickly wish upon it with their checkbooks before it dissapears.

Homes that are very old, in bad locations, too agressively priced, odd, etc, however, are selling for as low as 90% of asking in these markets and sellers are having to drop prices on those, because buyers want the gems only in this market.

Many people in these markets up her can afford to hold out as sellers or carry more than one mortgage, which slows the drop in prices and keeps inventories relatively low.

While that sould also be true in RSF, it is not reflected in the market. RSF and LAH are both about the same size in population and median household income, yet RSF has 5 times as many houses on the market as LAH. In terms of nice houses (by my definition) RSF has 30 times as many “nice” houses for sale as LAH does right now.