Another reason we won't dry up and blow away anytime soon.
The demise of Silicon Valley and, especially, its "over-priced" real estate market, is a topic of regular and hopeful speculation in some circles, mostly the circles that don't seem to understand that supply and demand—not seller greed, agent conspiracy and cosmic unfairness—prices our homes beyond their reach. Every Silicon Valley bust since this area got its name in the '70s has convinced a sizeable segment of the public including, I'm embarrassed to admit, even agents who should know a thing or two about cycles, that our glory days are over and that we're doomed to be a sad shadow of ourselves, a sort of warm-weather Rust Belt.
But live through enough boom-and-bust-and-boom cycles and you begin to suspect that maybe, just maybe, Silicon Valley has legs. An interesting conversation I had recently with an India-born buyer about why she put down roots here reinforces that suspicion.
She's lived in other parts of the US, but only here is she truly comfortable in her own skin. Here she can be herself, and be accepted as herself. Here no one patronizes her by complimenting her on her English.
Here, she says, diversity is real and not just some ideal celebrated mostly in its absence. The diversity is both obvious and in the background, both superficial and profound, ranging from the restaurants she drives past every day to the people she sees at the mall and PTA to the elected officials who represent her.
The dot-com era brought her here, but she hung on through the dot bust, and she knows that if she gets laid off, she can always find another job.
She tells me that's because the major tech companies have a big presence here, something I vaguely knew, but then she tells me why they do, even with all the off-shoring, and why they'll stick around. She says they locate their marketing and R&D here because most of their customers are here, so they need to be here to know their customers.
And we don't have just one or two big employers here, she says, but many. We're not a one-factory town facing economic disaster if the employer has a bad quarter and shutters the factory.
And, of course, she and her friends have all the advantages of living in an area with a large Indian community. Not to mention all the other advantages that come from living in one of the most beautiful, temperate and sophisticated places on the face of the earth.
She and her friends could enjoy all this by renting, of course, so why buy a home? When she came here in 1995, she says, Palo Alto homes were selling for $380,000 and everyone knew that price level wasn't sustainable. Many bought anyway, perhaps not in Palo Alto but in more rational-looking alternatives like Cupertino and Fremont. And, yes, there was a bit of a panic when the dot bust took a chunk out of home prices and almost everyone, recent immigrant and old-timer alike, was sure the dream was over for good and forever. But the dream slowly rediscovered and redefined itself, prices quickly recovered and then some, and now Palo Alto homes sell for three times those unsustainable 1995 prices and more, and now she and her friends are true believers and seasoned homeowners.
Multiply my client by the tens of thousands, and her ethnic and cultural community by a handful of large ones and a multitude of smaller ones, and you understand the strength and appeal of real estate in this area. The dream here isn't just making a quick buck by changing the paradigm. Nor is the dream to make a quick buck by waiting waiting waiting until homes are screaming-deal risk-free investments begging to be bought. The dream has nothing to do with this kind of naive opportunism, nor with the sense of entitlement and the juvenile cynicism and cheap ennui of a stagnant, complacent culture. In fact, the dream repudiates all that. The dream is a complete, deeply rooted and sustainable lifestyle, based on an intelligent combination of better-life idealism and show-me practicality, one that blends into the new culture when it sees the benefit while celebrating the ancient culture it brought with it.
After hundreds of years of immigration, it's a trite commonplace to say that this country gains new energy from its new residents. But here the revitalization is real and shows itself in many ways, subtly and profoundly, as, for example, in local real estate, whose recovery has been led in large part by buyers who weren't born here, but also suddenly and dramatically, in the space of an hour or so, as it did last Christmas when I drove from one retail chain store in a San Mateo County city whose quality of life hasn't attracted well-educated immigrants to another in Santa Clara County that has. Same chain, mostly the same merchandise, and two cities whose similar home prices suggest similar income. But the more positive, upbeat attitude of the clientele in the Santa Clara County store was a welcome breath of fresh air.
Telling suggestions that the commonplace holds true, and that it's anything but trite.