Willow Glen and Almaden Valley Are Proof San Jose Doesn't Have One Housing Market

Every San Jose housing report this year opens with the same number: a citywide median that moved a percentage point or two and became a headline. As of the three months ending August 2026, that number sat at $1.4 million, down 3.6 percent from the same period a year earlier, with the average San Jose house price at $1.36 million and homes taking about 21 days to sell.

That figure is accurate. It is also close to useless if you're trying to decide whether Willow Glen or Almaden Valley makes more sense for your family, because right now both neighborhoods are quietly contradicting themselves. In each case, the average and the median, pulled from the same data set for the same window of time, point in different directions. Understanding why is the difference between reading a market and reading a headline.

Willow Glen's Average and Median Stopped Agreeing

In March 2026, Willow Glen's single-family homes carried a median sale price of $1.9 million, down 6.1 percent from a year earlier. The average sale price for the same homes over the same window was $2.1 million, up 12.3 percent year over year. Sales volume was 142 homes, down slightly from 149 the prior year, with days on market compressing to 10 from 13.

Read quickly, that looks like a typo. It isn't. The median tells you what the typical home sold for, ranked squarely in the middle of every closed sale. The average gets pulled by whatever sits at the extremes. When 142 homes close in a quarter, it doesn't take many high-end sales to drag the average well above where the typical buyer actually transacted, even as that typical price is falling.

Zoom into a smaller slice and the split gets sharper. Willow Glen South-Lincoln Glen, one of the micro-areas within Willow Glen, posted an average sale price of $2.5 million in its most recent month, up 39.0 percent year over year. Its three-month median for the period ending June 2026 was $2.0 million, down 5.9 percent over the same stretch, with volume falling to 35 homes sold from 42 a year earlier. Same neighborhood, same source, same month: one number says the market is surging, the other says it's softening.

Willow Glen isn't one price zone pretending to be several. It's genuinely several, stitched together under one name. A Silicon Valley market blog that tracks the neighborhood's older sub-pockets by name, places like Palm Haven, The Willows, Dry Creek, and St. Francis Woods, along with the walk-to-town blocks near Lincoln Avenue, put it plainly this spring: it's a patchwork of smaller markets, and what's happening in one segment can be very different from what's happening in another. A quarter that happens to include three closings on the Dry Creek side will read differently than one weighted toward the walk-to-town blocks, regardless of what buyers are actually willing to pay for a comparable home.

Almaden Valley: A Six-Figure Swing in Four Months

Almaden Valley shows the same mechanism from a different angle. In February 2026, the neighborhood's median sale price was $2.0 million, down 13.2 percent from a year earlier. The average was $2.2 million, down 6.9 percent. Only 38 homes sold that month, compared to 57 the year before, a volume drop of roughly a third. Days on market held steady at 12.

By June 2026, the picture had moved again. That month's 27 single-family closings carried a median sale price of $2.38 million, roughly $380,000 higher than the February figure just four months earlier, with days on market down to 10 and homes selling at an average of 103 percent of list price.

Nothing about the underlying value of an Almaden Valley home shifted that much in four months. What shifted was the sample. With only two or three dozen homes closing in any given month, a handful of sales on the Almaden Country Club side of the neighborhood, or conversely a cluster of smaller resale homes off the golf course, can move the median by hundreds of thousands of dollars without reflecting any real change in what a typical buyer is paying. The volume drop itself matters just as much as the price swing: a market built on a third fewer transactions than the year before is a thinner, more easily tilted sample, which is exactly why its headline numbers bounce around more than a neighborhood that closes four times as many sales.

When the Trackers Themselves Disagree

The average-versus-median split inside a single data set is one problem. A second, quieter problem shows up when two different data providers look at the identical neighborhood and reach opposite conclusions.

This spring, a Silicon Valley market blog that publishes weekly tracking on Willow Glen's condo and townhouse listings flagged exactly that. A list-price index built on active listings was calling the condo and townhouse segment a strong seller's market. Closed-sale data for the same homes over the same stretch showed the opposite: more inventory sitting unsold than a year earlier, fewer completed sales, and softer pricing across the board. The blog's own conclusion was that closed-sale numbers deserve more weight, because they reflect what buyers actually paid rather than what sellers hoped to get.

If two trackers looking at the same zip code in the same month can't agree on direction, a citywide median glanced at from a national portal is telling you even less about the specific street you're watching.

What This Means If You're Comparing Neighborhoods

None of this means the numbers are wrong. It means a single number, by itself, answers a narrower question than most people assume it does. Before comparing Willow Glen to Almaden Valley, or either one to a neighborhood you haven't researched yet, it helps to ask three things.

• Median or average, and built on how many sales? A median from 140 closings is a sturdier number than one built from 27. Almaden Valley's smaller monthly volume means its headline figures will keep swinging more than Willow Glen's for the simple reason that there's less data smoothing out the noise.
• Which pocket sold? Willow Glen's Palm Haven and Willow Glen South-Lincoln Glen sub-areas don't price like the walk-to-town blocks near Lincoln Avenue. Almaden Valley's streets closest to the Almaden Country Club don't price like its older tract blocks. A neighborhood-wide figure blends all of it together.
• Over what window? A single month's closings in a 30 to 40 sale neighborhood is a thin slice. Trailing three-month or twelve-month figures smooth out the kind of swing Almaden Valley just posted.

For a seller, pricing a listing off a neighborhood-wide median without knowing which pocket generated that median is how a home sits on the market longer than expected, or gets underpriced against its actual comps. For a buyer, a headline that says a neighborhood's median is falling doesn't necessarily mean the specific street you're watching is getting cheaper. It might just mean fewer large homes closed that month.

A Couple of Direct Questions

Is Willow Glen or Almaden Valley the more price-stable choice right now? Willow Glen's overall numbers have moved less dramatically month to month simply because it sells roughly four times as many homes as Almaden Valley in a given period. That said, Willow Glen's own micro-pockets, like Willow Glen South-Lincoln Glen, can swing just as sharply as Almaden Valley's neighborhood-wide figures. Stability depends on which slice you're looking at, not just which neighborhood name is on the report.

Why does Almaden Valley's median move more than Willow Glen's? Mostly volume. Fewer monthly closings mean each individual sale carries more weight in the math, which is why a handful of high-end or lower-tier transactions can shift the median by six figures in a single reporting period.

If you're weighing Willow Glen against Almaden Valley, or trying to figure out what a specific block's recent sales actually say about your own timing, the headline number is a starting point, not an answer. Julio M. Orozco has spent years pulling apart exactly this kind of neighborhood-level data for buyers and sellers across San Jose and the surrounding South County markets. If you want a second set of eyes on what the numbers in your target pocket are really telling you, let's connect.