Photo credit: Komail Naqvi
Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp is the biggest-ever purchase of a company in the area, adding the rapidly-developing mobile messaging service to CEO Mark Zuckerberg's increasing arsenal of acquisitions.
The social network stunned the public and investors alike when it announced the price tag for its fellow Silicon Valley resident, which is only five years old. After all, it is the equivalent of 16 Instagrams.
While WhatsApp was exponentially expanding, Silicon Valley's real estate market was also wasting no time in growing. In January 2014, the median price of a single family home surged 11 per cent year-on-year in San Mateo County, according to the Silicon Valley Association of Realtors. In Santa Clara, median sales prices rocketed 43 per cent year-on-year.
The figures accompany a raft of positive statistics for the whole country, as the real estate recovery saw the majority of metropolitan areas across North America enjoy annual price growth in the fourth quarter of 2013. The median existing single-family home price increased in 73 per cent of measured markets, with 26 per cent recording double-digit increases.
California was far out in front, though, with San Jose - home to headline-grabbing, technology-loving Silicon Valley - ranked the most expensive housing market by the National Association of Realtors.
Indeed, the number of California homes that sold for a million dollars or more last year rose by 45.1 per cent year-on-year to the highest level in six years - and Silicon Valley neighborhoods continue to rank among the highest on the list.
As the recovery gathers momentum, though, those climbing prices, combined with a low housing supply and ising mortgage rates, are starting to hamper housing affordability, causing sales to slow down.
In Silicon Valley, where booming companies are bringing more employees into the area, that shift is starting to be felt by many. 7,400 housing units were approved in the last year for construction, reports KGO, but even that fals far short of the 33,000 people who moved to the area to take jobs.
46,000 new jobs were created in total in 2013, according to the Silicon Valley Index, a rise of 3.4 per cent. But the glowing post-recession performance has seen rents increase as well as prices. A one-bedroom flat on Tasman Avenue now costs almost $2,300.
"We have three children and I'm a stay-home mom and my husband works full-time, so I believe it's by God's grace that we're able to make ends meet," one San Jose resident Maryann Cisneros told ABC Local, proof that the pressure is being placed most of all on middle and lower-income workers.
With over half of the Valley earning over $100,000 per year, though, Silicon Valley's housing market only seems to be heading in one direction. For Facebook and WhatsApp this week, that will be the least of their concerns. After all, if WhatsApp is worth 16 Instagrams, imagine how many houses it could buy.
USA, House Prices, California homes