If, for the past year, you've procrastinated about buying a home in Silicon Valley, waiting is about to rip a hole in your wallet the size of $36,800.

San Jose, CA -- the capital of the high-tech region known as Silicon Valley -- experienced some of the slowest growing home values in the past several years, but a look at the bloom on the spring market reveals everything is coming up roses again -- for sellers.

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco's quarterly "Western Economic Developments" says, in terms of home price appreciation last year, the San Jose metropolitan area ranked two spots from dead last -- 218th in 220 metropolitan areas.

The report does not give the specific rate of appreciation, but oh, what a difference a year makes.

From February to March this year, based on home prices in closed sales, the median price of single-family homes jumped from $566,200 to a record $603,000, adding $36,800 to the price, according to preliminary numbers from Silicon Valley's resident real estate statistician, Richard Calhoun, owner-broker of Creekside Realty.

That's a price jump of 6.5 percent -- in less than a single month.

The market's sizzling rate of appreciation could be just building up steam.

Sales are just as hot as prices. The number of homes sold in March stood at 1,269 earlier this week, closing in on a two-year old record of 1,470 homes sold in May of 2002, says Calhoun, who publishes the Bay Area Real Estate Market Newsletter.

Low interest rates, move-up buyers tapped out on capital gains tax exclusions and seasonal buying have combined to generate so much demand that the sales price-to-list price ratio moved up to 100.5 percent, which means the average sales price is .5 percent more than the asking price. Also, with limited inventories, homes selling like hotcakes are on the market for a median of only 14 days before they are turned over to new owners.

"There is no question that the real estate market is appreciating significantly for the first time in four years," said Calhoun.

"Remember, the median price in April 2000 was $560,000 and for February 2004 it was only $566,200 (moving only about 1.1 percent in 3 years). Now, in just under one month it jumped to $603,000," he added.

He cautioned that the median price numbers are not final, but based on sales for the month of March ending at the beginning of the last week in March. The final median price could be between $595,000 and $610,000, said Calhoun.

Even at $595,000, the 5 percent monthly rate of appreciation isn't peanuts.

"What is not mentioned here (in the federal reserve bank's numbers) is that Santa Clara County is selling more homes now than ever," said Calhoun.

Luckily, for buyers, the real estate industry this week is conducting a housing fair to help potential buyers get past losses due to procrastination and on to home ownership -- before prices rise further and the specter of higher interest rates shrouds the market.

"It's about the cost of waiting," said independent real estate broker Janet Houde of San Jose, president of the Santa Clara County Association of Realtors, which is sponsoring the fair.

Published: April 2, 2004

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.