They have delayed buying family-room furniture. And Vimala, who has stayed home to raise the couple's two children, will start looking for a job to help pay for private schools. Vimala said, nodding toward her husband. A few doors down, Yunfang Tu, a Cisco Systems engineer, hashes out a backup plan with her husband, Kevin Wu, a Sun Microsystems engineer. Yet further down the street, at 622 Santa Barbara, Ramesh Vejju, who works for start-up myCFO in Mountain View, admits to being somewhat paralyzed by how far the value in his investments have fallen.
Every purchase has to be rethought now.
As March began, about 2,100 houses were on the market in Santa Clara County, triple the inventory from a year earlier, when the supply was near an all-time low. Not only do buyers have more to choose from, but homes are staying on the market longer. Santa Clara County homes that sold in February, for example, spent an average of 30 days on the market, compared to 21 days in February 2000. Rather than sounding an alarm, realty agents say the housing market is getting back to normal. Still, well-priced homes are selling quickly.