The area’s high-end homebuyers, many of whom work in tech, don’t take market fluctuations well, largely because their wealth is typically generated through IPOs and stocks. If the stock market is in a tizzy, they won’t be buying real estate.
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It’s not an easy time to be selling real estate in Silicon Valley.
Optimism for a new era of market prosperity in the Trump administration has sagged as tariff-charged market volatility and sweeping visa revocations have repelled the Valley’s affluent homebuyers fearing the worst, The San Francisco Standard reported.
The area’s high-end homebuyers, many of whom work in tech, don’t take market fluctuations well, local agents say. That’s largely because their wealth is typically generated through IPOs and stocks. Therefore, stock market fluctuations also tend to have an outsized impact on Silicon Valley’s real estate market compared to other parts of the country.
Joe Velasco | Coldwell Banker
Still, recent market reports show the luxury market pulling back right now across the country as consumers face economic uncertainty. Signed luxury contracts were down 12 percent in April from the previous month, according to a report from Zillow — an unusual move during a time of year when signed contracts are usually increasing. New luxury listings were also down 5 percent from March, and down 3.4 percent year over year.
“Tech executives are extremely skittish,” Joe Velasco of the Joe Velasco Group at Coldwell Banker told The Standard.
Turns out there’s a reason for that skittishness — companies that make up what’s known as the Magnificent 7 (Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon and Tesla) lost more than $1 trillion in market capitalization in the two days following President Trump’s tariffs announcement, while Apple and Nvidia alone lost a combined $520 billion. The stock market has since rebounded, but remains on uneven footing, causing tech execs to be wary.
According to Velasco, who has been an agent in the region for two decades, his clients typically have available around 1.5 to three times the price of the property they’re interested in available in stock. But with some reporting their portfolio values dropping by around 30 to 40 percent, their buying power has been significantly curbed.
“They are very skittish to write a full-price offer or anything above asking price,” Velasco told The Standard. “And people who don’t need to sell are holding on.”
Spencer Hsu | eXp Realty
Other tech workers who are on work visas like H-1Bs are similarly pulling back from the market now, agents said. With the Trump administration analyzing residents’ visas more intensely and increasing visa revocations, Palo Alto-based agent Spencer Hsu told The Standard he’s noticed more of his prospective clients hesitate to buy now with the fear that their lives in the U.S. are not as permanent as they once thought.
“They’re fearful their visas might not get renewed or they might lose their jobs, which means their immigration status is jeopardized,” Hsu said.
It isn’t all bad news for Bay Area real estate agents, however. Amidst stock market fluctuations, international buyers are starting to move their money out of the U.S. stock market and into real estate as a safe harbor. For Velasko, that means his international buyer business has roughly doubled from about 5 percent of his business to 10 percent since the tariffs were announced. He said he’s regularly contacted by clients from China and Canada, and recently assisted a client from Singapore who bought a $9.5 million Menlo Park mansion after selling off some of his U.S. stock.
Eric Boyenga | Compass
If the stock market continues to steady, a real estate boom may actually be on the horizon for Silicon Valley with a handful of AI companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic and Databricks, nearing IPOs — which could eventually mean more real estate investment.
“This is gonna be one of the biggest booms,” Eric Boyenga of Compass predicted to The Standard. “You can feel it, no different from when Google and Facebook were building to an IPO.”
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