Santa Cruz real estate climbs hottest markets list

Now that spring is here, the housing market is expected to pick up.

Realtor.com has just come out with a hot housing market list with Santa Cruz making the top 10.

On Cayuga Street in Santa Cruz, a cozy little house is up for sale going for $832,000. If you think that is high as far as prices go, it is actually the midpoint price point.

There are about 200 homes for sale in Santa Cruz with a median price of about $800,000. It is not exactly cheap, but people are still coming to buy.

“Personally, I find that our buyers are typically blessed with some tech money and tech jobs,” said Katrin Tobin, a realtor. “So the ones that have managed to pull together the down payment and have the incomes to qualify at these prices often have vocational roots, job roots in the Silicon Valley.”

Tobin says there is such low inventory in the Santa Cruz market, making for a lot of competition among buyers looking to get into the area.

“So there’s not a lot of building going on, it’s really tough,” said Tobin. “Costs of building have gone up, so where there might be opportunities to build housing, the costs of building are high. So it’s hard for builders, I think, to make the money, the margins that they’re looking for.”

While landing a house here may be meant for the financially well-off, Tobin says she has seen people reach their dreams.

“I spent the morning doing inspections with a young couple that moved here from Wisconsin a couple years ago, penniless they said, and well educated,” said Tobin.

One of them got a software job at Google. In two years, they were able to save enough money to buy their own home in Santa Cruz.

“But that’s not a common thing. I spoke recently to the mother of a recently promoted firefighter who has a great job, benefits, pensions, security, grew up here, but has had really a hard time trying to just save the money for a down payment,” said Tobin.

The median selling price for a home across the United States is $260,000. That is eight percent higher than it was a year ago.