All-Cash Offers in San Carlos

You don't need me to tell you that San Carlos is becoming a very expensive place to buy a home. If you follow the stats and trends that I post on this blog, you know that the average price of a single-family home in San Carlos is inching ever closer to $3,000,000. That figure must be mind-blowing to someone who has lived in this town for decades and probably spent a tiny fraction of that amount to purchase their home in what was a sleepy, often overlooked community.

But even at the current price levels, San Carlos remains one of the more affordable communities on the Peninsula, especially when you compare it to other communities with strong schools and vibrant downtowns. Menlo Park? You're looking at an average of $4,100,000 for a single-family home. And Palo Alto, which now seems to be on another planet entirely, is at $5,000,000.

With home prices seemingly climbing unabatedly in San Carlos and along the Peninsula, I hear a common assumption from residents that the only people buying homes in this market are those paying all cash. After all, in order to afford a mortgage on that $3,000,000 “average” home in San Carlos, you'd have to put down a minimum of 20% ($600,000), and when you factor in insurance and property tax, your monthly mortgage is right about $18,000.

Let that sink in for a minute.

In this week's San Carlos Real Estate Week in Review, I asked if you could guess the percentage of single-family homes that sell for all cash in a given year. Here is the result of that poll:

The majority of your answers were either 25% or 40%. But despite what you might think, and despite the breathtaking prices being paid for homes in San Carlos, the reality is that only a small minority are purchased with all cash.

The table below shows the percentage of all-cash sales over the past 5 years.

Year	Total # of Homes Sold	% All Cash
2026 YTD	146	16%
2025	243	16%
2024	216	13%
2023	239	15%
2022	234	16%
2021	368	12%

This data is gleaned from the Multiple Listing Service and depends on how accurately the financing terms were reported by the respective listing agents. But assuming that it's reasonably accurate, for the past five years or so, the percentage of all-cash sales of single-family homes in San Carlos has been running consistently around 15%.

That may change going forward.

What Lies Ahead?

The unprecedented wealth that has already been created by existing tech companies, and an order of magnitude more forecasted over the next two years from the anticipated IPO's of AI companies, will certainly mint thousands more instant millionaires who will be turning that wealth into improving their housing situations. It's already happening in San Francisco, where the residential real estate market has absolutely exploded, with overbids exceeding a million dollars and all-cash offers becoming the norm.

San Carlos certainly doesn't carry the panache of San Francisco, Palo Alto, or Atherton with this suddenly wealthy group of home buyers, but I fully expect to see the percentage of all-cash offers start to rise over the next two years as the impact of this massive infusion of wealth impacts every city along the Peninsula.