High-tech IPOs like LinkedIn's and the much-speculated-upon Facebook offering are driving up real estate prices in Silicon Valley to pre-bubble levels, reports Bloomberg News. Newly-minted millionaires -- and those who hope to be -- are flocking to the area, starting bidding wars at a time when the rest of California's housing market is languishing. Is it the start of a new bubble or a sign of a true turnaround? Bloomberg has the full story.A surge in wealth from technology stock sales and initial public offerings is spilling into the Silicon Valley real estate market as newly rich workers bid up home values in suburban cities south of San Francisco.
The median price of single-family houses sold in Palo Alto, home of Facebook Inc., climbed 20 percent in May from a year earlier to $1.63 million, the biggest jump since 2008, according to preliminary figures from research company DataQuick. In Mountain View, the base of LinkedIn Corp., prices rose 3.1 percent to $957,500, the ninth year-over-year gain in 12 months.
The advances are defying a U.S. housing slump that has sent national values to an eight-year low. Share sales such as the IPO of LinkedIn -- which doubled on its first day of trading -- and an expected offering from Facebook will fuel a boom in some Silicon Valley cities into 2013, said Kenneth Rosen, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.
Read the full story at Bloomberg News.
For more on home prices and related topics see these AOL Real Estate guides:
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- How to Sell Your Home in a Short Sale
- How to Buy Foreclosures
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