Old Blogs, New Blogs

I spent a little time on a rainy Sunday looking over some of the more than 700 posts in this site. I am amazed by the time dedicated to writing daily articles for the first couple of years, and in re-reading them, how timely most of them still are today. The pointers for preparing a home for sale and maintaining it are still valid, and much of what I wrote about the local market is still the same....surprising, since the first input was in the spring of 2007, and so much has happened in the local, state, and national economy since then. My description of our area (Sunnyvale, Cupertino) real estate market as an oasis, nearly untouched by the short sales and foreclosures around us, is still pretty accurate. There have been some exceptions, but our 10-15% loss in value from the top of the market is being slowly regained in the many multiple offers we're seeing.
The most visible local victim of the downturn is the deserted Sunnyvale Downtown Development. I wrote with such hope of seeing a delightful new town center built, and now it sits, an empty shell, waiting for a recovery that we can only hope will come soon.