patrick.net

Nobody says

Wong,
Then explain 90% Asian kids in Cupertino schools. You gotta back it up with the facts.
Essentially. coming from Chinese, I will practically dismiss your comment in this case.

LOL! so easy to fall for my name.. Actually, im white and not asian.. German ancestry.

Regarding your question.. a coworker of mine.. he is Jap-American.. parents been here for decades. His wife also. Both grads from Cupertino back in the day. Two kids now go to Cupertino High. Like them, many have been around here for a long time. There many Asian in my HS back in the day as well. Some Chinese, some Japanese, Korean, Viet, etc etc.

As for facts.. look to the US Census data back in 1990. 20% were Asian, today 25%. Are you factoring the white baby boomers who live in Cupertino, and considering their children moved off to live elsewhere.

Why do they swarm to Cupertino and overpay.. beats me. But it wont last long. They certainly better not ask for a bail out as prices tank.

SparrowBell says

I hate to say this, though I don't believe the prices were driven up soley by Asians, I do think Chinese from mainland are much more readily to pay premium for educations and houses b'cos few of my Chinese friends here, who do not own a house, and most of them own a house in the premium neighborhood ....

If you don't think the Chinese can crash the housing market, take a look at what happened in Hong Kong back in the late 90's. Chinese surely like to gamble with their real-estate, so, prices in places like Cupertino will crash just as hard as they escalated.

thomas.wong1986 says

They certainly better not ask for a bail out as prices tank.

You kidding me? That is exactly what they will ask for when it tanks. They will call attention to this site and the people that were saying "Things are different in Cupertino". They will cry saying they thought patrick.net was mostly honest people trying to help each other. Their realtard, who appeared nice, will become their enemy as they remember the rush job that was done on them. "You better buy this one quick because more Asians families are on the next flight, and Apple stock just went up another 100B in value!". They will say they though that Cupertino housing never goes down. It has great School scores and that justifies everything!

People will not admit what buying a property in the BA really means. It means you are gambling for house price appreciation. If you don't get it, then you will cry like everyone does.

Renting for Half Cost,

Your Post is Hilarious! For those who that happens to, another planeload is already disembarking on the tarmac. For Cupertino and other Gaokao Culture places in The Fortress, the Sky is The Limit.

It is different in The Fortress.

I live in a nice area of north Cupertino. It is overwhelmingly Chinese. I rarely see any white people in my neighborhood. Some of the Chinese are citizens, but even most of those were born and raised in China or Taiwan.

I grew up in West San Jose and went to Junior High and High School in Cupertino. This was in the seventies. Cupertino was pretty much a dump, Rancho Riconada was kind of a dangerous place, and the schools were shitty (police removing guns in lockers at Hyde Junior High) or OK but not great (maybe Monte Vista was OK).

The schools haven't gotten any better. The Chinese and a relatively small group of Indians raised the API scores because of their fairly extreme focus on school.

In my neighborhood there are many kids but you wouldn't know it. You almost never see them except for Halloween. They are inside doing homework, playing the piano or doing something else educational. Almost every house has a piano. Piano stores across the US and in Santa Clara County are doing very badly but they are doing very well in Cupertino.

The Chinese come to Cupertino for the same reason many other places are segregated. They know people in Cupertino so they move there. Standard snowball effect. Also, there are a lot of homes in Cupertino between 1 and 1.5 million. That's actually relatively inexpensive compared to Saratoga or other city's with high API scores (Los Altos, Palo Alto, etc.).

So to address the original question, I think there aren't a lot of movers here and therefore there isn't a lot of inventory. They come and they stay, usually for 20 years or more until there kids are out of high school. The prices aren't that high, relatively speaking.

Still, I don't think any city is immune. And the stats you have can easily distort reality, especially in a small community, depending on what houses sold in the recent past. If north Cupertino sells a few more than south Cupertino, the numbers get skewed.

Lastly, Chinese have a habit of becoming landlords. If they do move, they often rent instead of sell.

Biff

thomas.wong1986 says

Why do they swarm to Cupertino and overpay.. beats me. But it wont last long.

B.A.C.A.H. says

Renting for Half Cost,

Your Post is Hilarious! For those who that happens to, another planeload is already disembarking on the tarmac. For Cupertino and other Gaokao Culture places in The Fortress, the Sky is The Limit.

It is different in The Fortress.

whats with your obsession with immigrants and cupertino? You repeat the same damn thing in every post.

Get over it Bill.. Apple to Apple comparison...

Apple has been around since the mid- 70s. With all the other great stuff going on in Cupertino-Santa Clara County back then, prices didnt magicaly double-triple in a few short years.

That being said, clearly home buyers were much more smarter back than and knew how to buy and save, vs the idiots today.

Serpentor says

whats with your obsession with immigrants and cupertino? You repeat the same damn thing in every post.

Maybe its a joke... Just like the joke about selling the Brooklyn Bridge. Or was it just a joke...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Parker

George Parker (1870–1936) was one of the most audacious con men in American history. He made his living selling New York's public landmarks to unwary tourists. His favorite object for sale was the Brooklyn Bridge, which he sold twice a week for years. He convinced his marks that they could make a fortune by controlling access to the roadway. More than once police had to roust naive buyers from the bridge as they tried to erect toll barriers..

Goran_K says

If you're a business man from Hong Kong, and $2,000,000 buys you a 2,500 sqft house in Cupertino, or a 1,100 sqft apartment in HK, the choice starts to make sense.

What utter nonsense. If you are a business in HK with $2,000,000, sitting in Cupertino on dead equity, who is minding the business back in Honk Kong?

thomas.wong1986 says

Apple has been around since the mid- 70s.

The Apple of today is an order of magnitude larger in terms of operations than the 2000s, and that was several orders of magnitude larger than the 1970s.

With all the other great stuff going on in Cupertino-Santa Clara County back then, prices didnt magicaly double-triple in a few short years.

For one, home prices did shoot up like crazy as the baby boom hit the market. My family was in El Cerrito at the time and I saw it first-hand as a kid.

But the post-Apollo & post-Vietnam spindown did put the Valley into something of a recession, from what I've come to undertand about the era.

The south bay had much more room to grow back then, both infill and overflow down the 85 and towards Milpitas.

Also, home prices haven't doubled or tripled here "in a few short years".

Per the chart above, prices have doubled from $550,000 in 1999 to $1.1M today, but the goddamn interest rate has in fact been halved since 1999.

Frankly, there are entire square miles of much nicer places to live in Fresno compared to Cupertino, eg:

http://binged.it/zh4cma

so I'm not saying Cupertino is the ultimate in housing, but it is what it is -- the home of a $460B market cap company (10 years ago it was $4.6B and kinda circling the bowl after the iMac craze faded and OS X was still being fixed up), plus a suburb of the Los Altos Saratoga professional enclave axis.

I thought prices were unsupportable in 2000-2001 and I was kinda right but I hadn't banked on Greenspan letting mortgages run free 2002-2004 nor did I see the rise of GOOG and Facebook 2004-now replace the former wealth-dumping events of the dotcom era (1995-2000).

The silicon valley is turning into a club for the cashed-out. Demand is willing but the supply is weak, and that's not even getting into the alleged Chinese influx, of which I know nothing about.

Most people I work with are obsessed with API scores. They dont want to venture near San Jose, Santa Clara, Milpitas where they feel (I dont know whether correctly or not) there are too many kids without attentive parents and drugs and bad behavior.

They also dont want to venture into Saratoga because they feel it has primarily rich and spoilt kids and bad behavior.

Dont know how much of these stereotypes are actually true but I have heard this type of reasoning from multiple people

Cupertino is seen as a place where hard working "middle class" $200K type families live which are neither blue collar nor trust fund babies...

dunnross says

Goran_K says

If you're a business man from Hong Kong, and $2,000,000 buys you a 2,500 sqft house in Cupertino, or a 1,100 sqft apartment in HK, the choice starts to make sense.

What utter nonsense. If you are a business in HK with $2,000,000, sitting in Cupertino on dead equity, who is minding the business back in Honk Kong?

Nonsense for the reason that if you are truely a business man you understand value, and is partly the reason why you have 2,000,000. It is the people who have it and don't understand its meaning that are throwing it away. Remember, as you get more, you want more even more. When you have 200k you think your attitude changes if you grow it to 2million. However, in reality you are more focused to grow the 2 to 4million. Simple fact of life. Only the people who were thrown into 2million by pure luck invest in bad value areas. They have a short half life though and don't make up the majority.

So, after all of this discussion.....

Does anyone in here actually want to live in Cupertino? Is it a hot topic because people want to live there & are annoyed at the prices, or are we just having fun examining a seemingly overvalued area that none of us would ever really want to live in. I'm in the latter group.

dunnross says

Goran_K says

If you're a business man from Hong Kong, and $2,000,000 buys you a 2,500 sqft house in Cupertino, or a 1,100 sqft apartment in HK, the choice starts to make sense.

What utter nonsense. If you are a business in HK with $2,000,000, sitting in Cupertino on dead equity, who is minding the business back in Honk Kong?

Yeah, like rich people around the globe can only think of one place to invest their money - buy a home in Cupertino and happily live ever after. LOL.

Wong,

Who cares about the macro. It is only 5% increase, but that 5% is concentrated in a small area driving up the price of housing. You have not explained why 90% of the student is Asian per API in Cupertino school.

Compared to Hoing Kong, the price of housing in Cupertino is still lower.

Every time I see the over priced transaction, it is usually Asian buyers with strong accent.

bmwman91 says

So, after all of this discussion.....

Does anyone in here actually want to live in Cupertino? Is it a hot topic because people want to live there & are annoyed at the prices, or are we just having fun examining a seemingly overvalued area that none of us would ever really want to live in. I'm in the latter group.

The latter. I worked and "played" there for years. The place is basically shit with zero personality. It's a *really* expensive strip mall.

CrazyMan says

bmwman91 says

So, after all of this discussion.....

Does anyone in here actually want to live in Cupertino? Is it a hot topic because people want to live there & are annoyed at the prices, or are we just having fun examining a seemingly overvalued area that none of us would ever really want to live in. I'm in the latter group.

The latter. I worked and "played" there for years. The place is basically shit with zero personality. It's a *really* expensive strip mall.

Later group also. If someone gave me a house for free there, I would rent it and still live elsewhere regardless of the cost. To me it is just the space between the two sets of montains. Necessary but pretty useless unless you are a farmer, and them days are gone around here. ;)

dunnross says

Goran_K says

If you're a business man from Hong Kong, and $2,000,000 buys you a 2,500 sqft house in Cupertino, or a 1,100 sqft apartment in HK, the choice starts to make sense.

What utter nonsense. If you are a business in HK with $2,000,000, sitting in Cupertino on dead equity, who is minding the business back in Honk Kong?

Dunross it's only nonsense to you because you don't understand the culture very well and the motivations behind their decision. But I like you so I'll explain.

San Marino and Cupertino have lots of wealthy chinese business types who buy homes here in the states not for themselves, but for their CHILDREN. Many of them go to school here in the states and college. In HK and China they consider American universities a luxury, almost like a feather in the cap.

Look at the API scores for schools in Cupertino and San Marino. Look at the rise of the chinese demographic. Look at the rise in prices.

Think about it for a second and put it together in your own mind.

Goran_K says

Dunross it's only nonsense to you because you don't understand the culture very well and the motivations behind their decision. But I like you so I'll explain.

San Marino and Cupertino have lots of wealthy chinese business types who buy homes here in the states not for themselves, but for their CHILDREN. Many of them go to school here in the states and college. In HK and China they consider American universities a luxury, almost like a feather in the cap.

Look at the API scores for schools in Cupertino and San Marino. Look at the rise of the chinese demographic. Look at the rise in prices.

Think about it for a second and put it together in your own mind.

I think its really YOU that don't understand MY culture. Your arguments have been rehashed 1000x here and it just doesn't hold water.

Do you think Cupertino is the center of the fucking universe? Do you really think millionaire commie tycoons really want to live near high tech? There are plenty of schools with a ton of immigrants in other areas of the world.

Let me repeat what I wrote many times to educate your freaking newbs
The vast majority of the immigrants in Cupertino did NOT come from Millionaire families. The worked hard, worked in high tech and saved to get to where they are. The price increase of the fortress areas happened because of the housing bubble cause by loose lending standards. This includes Crapertino.

I'm sorry you brought an overpriced house there, you are not the first person to post on Patrick.net to rationalize your purchase. The reasons you gave have been repeated a million times here.

If I was you, I'd enjoy the house and try not to worry about where price will go.

And no, I have no desire to live in Crapertino. I'd rather live in Palo Alto so my kid can become a superstar basketball player. Because Palo Alto is even more magical then Cupertino. LOL

Serpent,

Every One is an individual, including you. Now that you've expressed your individuality, you're well on your way to assimilation. Maybe, you're already completely assimilated. Like my American born Chinese friends who also want nothing to do with that API ghetto, including a couple who grew up in that particular API ghetto and attended the schools there.

Regarding the rest who don't act so Individuality-ish, I did not say they are or came from Millionaire Families.

I said, Wealthy Families. Of course they are Wealthy. To get an engineering degree (or whatever) in Asia that's good enough to get an H-1 job or into grad school here, of course you have to be wealthy, well-connected. I don't think Blue Collar types are coming here by that route.

Once they are here, well, to pay cash in The Fortress, they have to be Wealthy. To have enough cash for a downpayment in The Fortress, they have to be Wealthy. To qualify to borrow in The Fortress, they have to be Wealthy. To afford the rent or the mortgage payment in The Fortress, they have to be Wealthy. To pay the Property Tax bill in The Fortress, they have to be wealthy.

LIke others here have observed, they are mostly immigrants bidding against each other either to buy or rent in the Gaokao Genuflection-to-the-API, and of course to be able to do so, of course they are wealthy.

You don't think they are so wealthy? Just ask the Rest of Us who live in most of the rest of Santa Clara County, who change the oil in their cars, clean their office buildings at night, cook the food in the restaurants they eat at, sell them the goods at the retail stores, etc.; of course they are wealthy.

They are Wealthy and they are Immigrants

Wealthy Immigrants. And they keep comin'.

"Does anyone in here actually want to live in Cupertino?"

If I was working for the mothership, sure. Can't beat being an easy (non-sweating) bike ride to work vs. dealing with 85/280.

But other than that, no way. I've begun to rethink my desire to live in Los Altos, too.

Access to a Chipotle & In N Out should not drive my major life choices, LOL. I can make my own burgers and maybe I should learn how to make "barbacoa" beef too.

Instead of paying a million-plus for a $35,000 house in Los Altos my pal decided to decamp to the hills above Santa Cruz for about $200,000 less, on a lot big enough that he can't throw a rock from his house to off his property.

Trader Joe's and Costco are an easy drive away still.

Back around 2002 I was looking at buying some land up in the San Lorenzo Valley and making a similar doomstead.

But most people have to commute into town every day, and 17 / 9 is a bitch of a commute so most families are stuck in the valley. And if you're stuck in the valley, Cupertino is in the sweet spot beween the shittiness of San Jose and the enclaves closer to Stanford.

White Flight from Cupertino : http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB113236377590902105-lMyQjAxMDE1MzEyOTMxNjkzWj.html

bmwman91 says

So, after all of this discussion.....

Does anyone in here actually want to live in Cupertino? Is it a hot topic because people want to live there & are annoyed at the prices, or are we just having fun examining a seemingly overvalued area that none of us would ever really want to live in. I'm in the latter group.

Regarding Cupertino desirability -
Agreed, if you are looking to go to bars and restaurants every night, cupertino is not a good fit. And those who prefer long commutes (it came up in a different thread) wouldn't like it if they work in silicon valley.

for someone with a family, looking for a quiet place, low crime, with other families, short commute, good schools, it's a nice place. Cheaper than Los Altos / Saratoga / Los Gatos / Palo Alto but nicer than Milpitas / Campbell / most of San Jose.

Saying Cupertino is "horrid" is a little extreme, that's a description of some place with bullets whizzing around.

baka, I still haven'' gotten an answer on why you are so obsessed with the immigrants. You use that term " Gaokao" like it makes you an expert. Did you just learn it because you seem to use it on every post.

No, you don't have to be wealthy or connected to get an H1B. I know because my parents and most of their friends came out here that way. Of course you can't be dirt poor and you have to be pretty smart, but there was absolutely no family money involved.

has the demographics in Cupertino changed? are many of them well off immigrants? yes, but they got to where the are because of hard work, not magical commie dragon gold. Macro and micro economic forces still applies. There is no gold plated force field around Cupertino when the surrounding areas, wealthy or not, are being affected.

How many of them paid cash in the Fortress? lets see some numbers. I'm curious.

You DID not have to be wealthy to qualify for a mortgage in the Fortress. THATS the point. Back when the bubble was brewing, anyone with a half way decent income and credit score can qualify for a 5yr ARM + a second mortgage for a down payment. THAT IS WHY THERE IS A HOUSING BUBBLE.

Serpentor says

baka, I still haven'' gotten an answer on why you are so obsessed with the immigrants. You use that term " Gaokao" like it makes you an expert.

i wonder if he's very mildly autistic or has some mild mental tick.

he loves to repeat certain terms over and over and over.

i can't put my finger on it, it's not just repeating concepts or larger ideas which is what most of the users here do, it's more precise where he likes repeating the specific word.

SiO2 says

Regarding Cupertino desirability -

Agreed, if you are looking to go to bars and restaurants every night, cupertino is not a good fit. And those who prefer long commutes (it came up in a different thread) wouldn't like it if they work in silicon valley.

for someone with a family, looking for a quiet place, low crime, with other families, short commute, good schools, it's a nice place. Cheaper than Los Altos / Saratoga / Los Gatos / Palo Alto but nicer than Milpitas / Campbell / most of San Jose.

Saying Cupertino is "horrid" is a little extreme, that's a description of some place with bullets whizzing around.

I think its being used to balance out some of the mythical worship thats been going on here. Like you said, its a decent family place, but its not even as nice as Los Altos, Saratoga, Gatos & PA... Not to mention Atherton and Hillsborough etc.

Hysteresis says

Serpentor says

baka, I still haven'' gotten an answer on why you are so obsessed with the immigrants. You use that term " Gaokao" like it makes you an expert.

i wonder if he's very mildly autistic or has some mild mental tick.

he loves to repeat certain terms over and over and over.

i can't put my finger on it, it's not just repeating concepts or larger ideas which is what most of the users here do, it's more precise where he likes repeating the specific word.

I think it's more like when a kid learns a cool new word and he tries to us it in every sentence.

SiO2 says

Saying Cupertino is "horrid" is a little extreme, that's a description of some place with bullets whizzing around.

I think it is "horrid" also, but not in a whizzing bullet way. The main roads are busy, the downtown is better than before, but still not that desirable. It is basically a city that is chopped up with highways and De Anza Blvd. Going anywhere means at least 15 traffic lights. If there was a google+ page with city circles, it would be grouped with San Jose and Sunnyvale, as opposed to Palo Alto, Los Altos, Los Gatos, Palo Alto, etc.

It really is an affluent wannabe city. A pig with lipstick and a dress. That is my definition of "horrid" here.

Bellingham Bill says

But most people have to commute into town every day, and 17 / 9 is a bitch of a commute so most families are stuck in the valley. And if you're stuck in the valley, Cupertino is in the sweet spot beween the shittiness of San Jose and the enclaves closer to Stanford.

I actually grew up in Boulder Creek (one of the most beautiful places on earth btw) and my mom still lives there. Parents bought a house there in ~1962

I used to work in Cupertino and there's actually a reasonable short cut off of hwy 9 to sunnyvale/saratoga rd.

That being said, yes, if the commute wasn't so long I'd live back up there in a hearbeat. It's a totally different lifestyle; you can still ride dirt bikes and shoot guns :)

there is no real "Downtown" in Cupertino. its all stripmalls.

At least Mo'vew and S'vale has Castro and Murphy with some excellent restaurants,decent bars, farmers market, and free live music in the summer.

This is getting a little silly. Cupertino is not expensive solely because of some Borg Collective of Asians with suitcases full of dragon gold (thanks Serpentor, funny term). It may be a factor, but it seems like people are fixating entirely too much on the fact that Asians make up much of an expensive area. Would people on here be hemming & hawing if it was overpriced but crammed full of white folks? Probably not.

Why?

Because it is old news. Us cracker folks have been doing our very best to wage class warfare on everyone else since forever. Now that Indians & Asians are getting some small pieces of that pie, it is suddenly some big deal. White kids were all encouraged to "express themselves" and pursue degrees in useless liberal arts degrees, and the Asian kids were all kicked in the ass from birth to be scientists, lawyers & doctors*. Now that those kids are adults, it is really any surprise to see who has money?

*I am not advocating the "tiger parent" bullshit I hear about. There is a healthy medium between that and naming your kid something dumb like Brayden & letting him wear women's clothes if he feels like he wants to. One turns your kid in to a pot smoking robot that lives in your basement indefinitely, and the other turns him into a status-seeking robot that worries way too much about how they compare to everyone else, knows how to make lots of money, and has NO idea of how to live a life.

Not that impressive.

Chinese Immigrants in the United States

http://www.iowaimmigrationeducation.org/index.cfm?nodeID=22246&audienceID=1&action=display&newsID=7623

Demographic and Socioeconomic Overview •Over one-third of all Chinese foreign born in the United States arrived in 2000 or later.

•Almost two-thirds of Chinese immigrants in 2008 were adults of working age.
•Chinese immigrant women outnumbered men in 2008.
•Chinese immigrants were much more likely than the foreign born overall to be naturalized US citizens.
•Three of every five Chinese immigrants in 2008 were limited English proficient.
•Most limited English proficient Chinese immigrants spoke Chinese, Cantonese, or Mandarin.
•Nearly half of Chinese foreign-born adults had a bachelor's degree or higher.
•Chinese immigrant men were less likely to participate in the civilian labor force than foreign-born men overall.
•Over half of employed Chinese-born men worked in services; management, business, and finance; other sciences and engineering; and information technology.
•One-third of employed Chinese-born women worked in services and in management, business, and finance.
•Chinese immigrants were about as likely to live in poverty as natives.
•Chinese immigrants were more likely than other immigrants to own their own home.
•About one in six Chinese immigrants did not have health insurance in 2008.
•Over one-third of native-born US citizens of Chinese ancestry spoke Chinese at home.
•About 420,000 children under age 18 resided in a household with a Chinese immigrant parent.

The parts of Cupertino I've been to it just bothers me that there are like no trees.
Have you ever seen the movie Goodfellas. Remember the place he ends up in the end? I could swear he's in Cupertino...

Today everything is different.

There's no action. I have to
wait around like everyone else.

Can't even get decent food.

After I got here I ordered
spaghetti with marinara sauce...

...and I got egg noodles with ketchup.

I'm an average nobody.

I get to live the rest of
my life like a schnook.

toothfairy says

I get to live the rest of
my life like a schnook.

Welcome to pretty much most of Santa Clara County... from Palo Alto to Milpitas down to So San Jose. After living here for 15-20 years its pretty much all the same.

Hi All,

It's interesting to read these perspectives, given my strong interest in Cupertino. Ultimately, we are not buying there mostly because we would like access to jobs in SF and not just mid peninsula.

I thought I would just point out one thing from the Chinese perspective. Some of us require access to strong after-school Chinese programs, in addition to good schools, so our children may grow up getting a good grounding in Mandarin Chinese. This does factor in to the demand for towns like Cupertino and others, at least, for me.

Disclaimer: I am not advocating buying a house in Cupertino. Just answering OP's question from my perspective.

Cupertino prices are down recently, but not by much. Here is my perspective on why the Cupertino prices will never crash. It is conveniently located - close to 280, 101, 85. Great shopping - WholeFoods, Target, Marina/Maxim markets etc, Tons of excellent restaurants. Tons of schools with great API - just go to an open house in Faria or Portal to see the droves of interested (Indian, Russian, Middle Eastern AND Chinese - not just Chinese) parents there. Tons of afterschool enrichment and tutoring centers catering to families that want to supplement the public school curriculum (or lack of it). Tons of tech companies with job prospects in the neighborhood. I can think of more if I had more time to come up with positives.
Cupertino has become an enclave and a "Fortress". I see a lot of successful Indians move in there frequently as well as Asians. A lot of them wear T shirts that proclaim the virtues of VMWare, Google, Facebook, QCom, AAPL, CSCO, NTAP etc. I am assuming that they must work in the tech field with high paying jobs and great prospects even in this economy. The good private schools here cost $20K - $30K per child (sometimes more - see Harker fees). So, if you had multiple kids, it makes economic sense to buy in Cupertino and send your kid to the Faria, Portal, Lincoln or Garden Gate etc schools which boast to be as good as any top notch private school. In fact it works out cheaper to buy a house there than to pay private school fees for 2 kids. And many people in California are disillusioned with the public school system, so they trust only public schools deemed "the best". The cream of the crop in the tech world live in the bay area and they are from backgrounds where a great education (not just arts and crafts and sports, but ALSO excellence in science and math) is considered the foremost goal for their kids and they are willing to pay what it takes to get it. They will not lose money if the bubble bursts - because for them, their other option would have been to buy a house in a lousy neighborhood (where the crash would be bigger) and they would have paid for private schooling in order to make up for the poor schools there. And the public schools in cupertino are asking for parent contributions so that they can keep the Arts and Sports programs going (and the parents gladly contribute) even though the schools lack the budget for them.
Renting in Cupertino to get into public schools is not cheap - 2 bedroom apartments cost $2700 per month in Cupertino city and SFH cost $3000+ easily (check craigs list).
So, if you are waiting for the prices in Cupertino to drop, you might as well wait for the tech companies in Silicon Valley to shut down and all the tech workers to emigrate to Asia and then it will happen.

Cupertino Smupertino. Palo Alto is where everyone wants to be (apparently). WTH is wrong with people; buying 500 sq ft rat shacks for $1.15M.

I give up. All this talk of housing bottoming and prices going down in the peninsula is just plain crazy talk.
http://www.redfin.com/CA/Palo-Alto/1820-Ash-St-94306/home/595737

I just need to find a 1/1 listed for 1.2M or more. That will teach these wannabes.

Serpentor says

Do you think Cupertino is the center of the fucking universe? Do you really think millionaire commie tycoons really want to live near high tech? There are plenty of schools with a ton of immigrants in other areas of the world.

Let me repeat what I wrote many times to educate your freaking newbs
The vast majority of the immigrants in Cupertino did NOT come from Millionaire families. The worked hard, worked in high tech and saved to get to where they are. The price increase of the fortress areas happened because of the housing bubble cause by loose lending standards. This includes Crapertino.

I never said Cupertino is full of only millionaires. Why are you so angry?

I think many people who have posted in this thread, including Bayhousehunter's great response show that Cupertino has plenty of attributes that will keep it more expensive than other communities in the Bay Area.

I think prices will come down, but I don't see a 65% crash like some of the extreme bears are claiming.

Have a nice day!

Serpentor says

Do you think Cupertino is the center of the fucking universe? Do you really think millionaire commie tycoons really want to live near high tech? There are plenty of schools with a ton of immigrants in other areas of the world.

Let me repeat what I wrote many times to educate your freaking newbs

Please chill.

That comment got two dislikes. One more and it goes into moderation. I have to admit it is deliberately insulting.