Belwood Annual Halloween Party: Details & Request for Volunteers
The annual Belwood Halloween Party is this Sunday, October 30, from 3 – 6pm at the Cabaña. (Huge kudos to Mark Morgan for organizing this fun community event.)
3:00pm: Games (and prizes) on the Cabana lawn
3:30pm: Magic Mirror opens
4:00pm: Pizza & drinks for sale
5:00pm: Haunted house tours begin
6:00pm: End of Party & Clean-up
Help is needed - volunteers are sought to help with the games, haunted house actors and others to help with the food & drinks. Teenagers can use this as an opportunity to accumulate Community Service hours.
If you’d like to sign up as a volunteer, please follow this link:
http://www.volunteerspot.com/login/entry/462345634809216010
For more info, please visit the HOA website’s page on this event:
http://www.belwoodhomes.org/Belwood/Halloween.html
Controlled burn near Morgan Hill creates smokey skies in Silicon Valley
Yesterday Jim and I attended the Los Gatos Creekside Sports Park kickoff celebration (will nearly touch Vasona Lake County Park and is just off of University Avenue) and as we often do, drove east on Blossom Hill Road to get home. Straight ahead of us, hanging over south San Jose and Santa Teresa and extending north, was a huge and darkened cloud. Smoke? Smog? Rainclouds?
We drove up Harwood Road and to the top of Harwood Court to get a better view of it. It did look like it started in south San Jose or further south than that. Some hikers were trekking up the challenging hill and we asked them if they knew if it were a fire. “Can’t smell it,” one replied “so it must be smog – just awful!” Smog, though, tends to dissipate from side to side and not hang together so tightly as what we saw.
View from Harwood Court in Los Gatos of the smokey skies created by the Cal Fire "controlled burn" in south county
We flipped on KLIV, the San Jose based AM radio station (channel 1590) that best covers local news & traffic, and learned right away that it was a controlled burn. This morning I googled the fire and learned that it’s a 2 day burn at part of Henry Coe State Park, overseen by Cal Fire, with more scheduled for today.
The Morgan Hill Times reports that “The prescribed burn is part of the ‘Western Zone Complex’ controlled fire in the remote area of the park. The fire will take place on the Middle Ridge Trail off Hobbs Road, about eight miles northeast of Morgan Hill, according to Calfire fire prevention specialist Chris Morgan. “
Halloween in Surmont, Belgatos and Belwood of Los Gatos
"Westhill Cemetery"
It’s mid-October and little ghosties, Jack-o-Lanterns, grave stones, witches, over sized spider webs and other trappings of Halloween have begun to appear in the Surmont, Belgatos and Belwood neighborhoods of east Los Gatos. There’s no shortage of the “Halloween Spirit” – so to speak – in this corner of town! It sure is fun to see.
What’s your favorite haunt in the hood?
If you’d like to share your photos of ultra cool Halloween decorating, I’d be very happy to post them here! Whether it’s effects that show up on October 1st or October 31st, we’d love to share them with the neighbors!
As the month goes on, I will add images of local streets, yards and homes where the decor is noteworthy.
Here’s one of my very favorites – a great little ghost western style town up the street from Jim & me.
Great halloween decor on Bacigalupi Drive
And another one with some serious spider webbing:
Belwood spider webs for Halloween
And yet another with quite a few ghosts – this one on Westhill Drive’s Belgatos area.
Westhill Drive ghosties, goblins and webs
Meanwhile, if your not-so-haunted house has children who’d like to participate in a pumpkin decorating contest, I’d like to invite you and them to dive into the project asap. My real estate brokerage, Sereno Group, is hosting its annual pumpkin decorating (not carving) contest and the DEADline is this Friday, October 21 at 5pm.
Read all about the contest on my Live in Los Gatos blog. Hope to see loads of the spooky, cute, funny, and outrageous creations next week!
Meeting for Belwood Gateway between Harwood and Bacigalupi to further discuss speed hump and its location
Two speed bumps for Belwood Gateway were planned to be installed after the August Los Gatos Town Council Meeting (which followed a May 11th traffic calming meeting at the Belwood Cabaña and a vote of the affected neighbors).
The first speed hump, which was not contested, will be placed fairly close to the community pool in the area between Belblossom and Bacigalupi on Belwood Gateway. It appears that this has the resounding endorsement of the folks who live nearby.
The second speed hump did not seem to enjoy the same unanimous approval (despite the vote). The next one, along the stretch of Belwood Gateway between Bacigalupi Drive and Harwood Road, left some Belwood of Los Gatos homeowners feeling that the process wasn’t done right, that the voting should have been teased out a little differently, and that perhaps a better resolution to the speeding and volume of traffic could be found. That resulted in another meeting, which happened earlier this evening.
Todd Capurso, the Los Gatos Director of Parks and Public Works, is very good about meeting with residents to discuss concerns, ideas, feedback etc. and this was no exception. Residents who live along the block of Belwood Gateway where the second speed bump or hump was to go (about 15 households in all) were notified of a meeting that took place tonight at 7pm in front of one of the homes. (I was notified so that I could keep the rest of the community updated via this and my other blog, LiveInLosGatos.com. Jim and Bella, our aging black lab, walked me over and then after meeting a few neighbors, continued on their walk while I stayed back to see what was decided.)
Only about half of the households had members show up for this informal discussion. One neighbor who was in favor of the traffic calming speed hump asked a couple of times why the meeting was even called since the vote was clearly in favor of this measure.
Home for rent on Belwood Lane
UPDATE: TAKEN!!
I’ll leave this info up as “market info” for those wondering what rents may be going for in the area. Most of Belwood, Belgatos and Surmont consists of houses on 10,000 or more SF lots so these will obviously be more expensive but this provides part of the range just the same. For people moving to the area from outside of Silicon Valley, it’s helpful information.
My friend Grace Keng of ReMax has a 2 bedroom, 1 bath 850 square foot duplex for rent on Belwood Lane. It is offered at $1650 per month. If interested, please contact Grace at grace (at) gracekeng.com or phone her at (408) 799-8887.
How’s the Belwood, Belgatos and Surmont real estate market?
How’s the local real estate market in east Los Gatos? Homes here are in a very active price point for Los Gatos generally, as well as for Los Gatos with Union schools. (You can also view homes for sale in our area here on BelwoodOfLosGatos.com under the “real estate” tab – or just use this link.)
Homes for sale, pending and sold/closed in the last 30 days in Belwood, Surmont and Belgatos neighborhoods:
Right now there are 5 houses for sale in Belwood, Belgatos and Surmont. Of them there are 4 “regular sale” properties available and one short sale in the neighborhood (2 on Westhill, 1 on Belhaven, 1 on Belblossom and the short sale on Belwood Gateway). One home, which was very affordably listed at $875,000, is sale pending. Additionally, a bank owned property or REO (real estate owned by the bank) is under contract.
How long have they been listed for sale? The two on Westhill just came on the market within the last few days. Two of the five have been available for about 60-70 days.
You can read the MLS info on each of them on my ValleyOfHeartsDelight blog.
How are prices? Four neighborhood homes have closed escrow in the last 30 days, with prices ranging from $975,000 to just under 1.2 million.
Months supply of inventory: To figure the months of inventory, you simply divide the actives by the solds (from the last month). We have 5 available and 4 which have closed – so 1.25 months of inventory. That looks pretty good but if you live in the area you know that these things tend to come in waves and just a month ago we had “infinite” months of inventory. So don’t get over excited about this and price your home too high – if houses are priced appropriately, they are selling. If not, they are sitting.
Below are live charts and graphs from Altos research for the 95032 zip code. They will automatically update themselves each week, so even if this post appears “old”, the info below will always be current!
Charts and graphs by Altos Research using active listings
| 90-day stats for Single Family properties in LOS GATOS, CA95032 as of May 11, 2012 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Median List Price: | $1,321,269 | Average List Price: | $1,874,790 |
| Total Inventory: | 65 | Price per Square Foot: | $614 |
| Average Home Size: | 2,174 | Median Lot Size: | 10,587 |
| Average # Beds: | 3.83 | Average # Baths: | 3.09 |
| Homes Absorbed: | 6 | Newly Listed: | 7 |
| Days on Market: | 110 | Average Age: | 47 |
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Speed bumps for Belwood Gateway
Two speed bumps have been planned for Belwood Gateway, one between Blossom Hill and Bacigalupi (close to Bacigalupi, actually between Belwood Lane and Belwood Court) and the second one between Bacigalupi and Harwood Roads.
Today I noticed that the areas with the speed humps have been painted. Have a look at 2 images of the second one:
And closer, it looks like this -
While the first stretch’s traffic calming measure seems to be well accepted, that’s not really the case for this second one which I photographed today. (See recent, previous post on traffic calming measures in Belwood.) So – we’ll see what happens.
In case you missed the prior discussions, there are really two or three main problems in the neighborhood generally but apparently worse on Belwood Gateway:
- Speeding – primarily, it’s residents doing this
- Running stop signs – ditto the source: it’s neighbors here too
- Traffic cutting through from Belwood Gateway to Almond Blossom rather than taking Blossom Hill Road (would seem to be not as much traffic as locals perceive, according to the data)
Most days Jim and I take Bella, our aging and very lovable black lab, on a walk to the park or elsewhere in the neighborhood. Virtually every time we step out, we see folks zooming down the streets at 35, 40 mph or more and just as often rolling through the stop signs – and sometimes not even slowing. (The worse offenses I’ve seen are on Harwood but they happen everywhere.) It’s especially dangerous near corners as people race through the turn and have no idea if there is a kid on a bike in the street, a car backing out of a driveway or what.
Please, neighbors and friends – watch your speedometer. Look out for the stop signs and make sure you really do stop and not roll.
Traffic Calming Measures in Belwood – An Update
Summer was busy and I managed to miss the end result of the voting done in June over the speed bumps (or humps) and the traffic triangle that was proposed at Harwood and Belwood Gateway. This week I emailed Todd Capurso the Los Gatos Director of Parks & Public Works, and he got me updated in no time. In case any of you neighbors also blinked and missed the upshot, I thought I’d post it here.
This subject was addressed at the town council meeting on August 15th and the results of the voting were written up in advance. Read all about it here:
http://losgatos.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=874&meta_id=93994
Todd tells me that “the residents on the block between Harwood and Bacigalupi have requested that I come back and meet with them because some of them do not want the speed-hump that was proposed (and passed) for their block” so there will be some ongoing discussion there about whether to add it or not. Stay tuned!
Many thanks to Todd Capurso for updating me on this topic.
Remember: kids under 3 need plastic covers in the community pool!
The Belwood pool got shut down for a few hours on August 23rd due to an accident which resulted in fecal matter getting into the pool. You know the drill – everyone out, need to remove what can be removed physically and then the pool has to get a strong chemical treatment. The latter is bad for bacteria, and also too hard on our skin so the result is the pool not being able to be used for several hours.
Kids under 3, toddlers and babies need to wear plastic covers in the pool – no exceptions. Yesterday was one of the hottest days of the year and a plastic cover been in use, no shut down would have occurred.
What’s with all the homes for sale in Belwood right now?
If you live in or near Belwood of Los Gatos, you’ve probably noticed a proliferation of “for sale” signs recently – and also a “coming soon” sign here or there! (I saw one of those at Westhill and Blossom Hill Road yesterday).
At the moment there are 3 available homes in Belwood and Belgatos – none in Surmont – (plus one on Harwood and one on Gemini Court as well as one on Regent) and there are three under contract or sale pending.
The homes for sale range in list price from a high of $1,295,000 to a low of $960,000 with an average list price of $1,078,300 and an average price per square foot of $504.50 (average days on market 32). Those which are sale pending vary from $1,199,000 to $900,000 with an average asking price of $1,049,667 and average price per SF of $439.04 (average days on market 23). It’s not rocket science that the more affordably priced homes tend to sell while those with higher asking amounts linger! Buyers want the most value for the money they spend. That can mean a bigger house or it can reflect the quality of remodeling or improvements at the property.
The ratio of listings to sales isn’t bad – 3 available, 3 under contract.
What has sold recently? Just one property has sold and closed in the last month: it was a 4 bed, 2 bath, 1748 SF model that closed escrow at a low, low price of $840,000. (The same floorplan is on the market for $960,000 on another street in the neighborhood – makes it a tough sell!)
With 3 available and 1 closed in the last months, it’s 3 months of inventory. What’s challenging is that the one which closed is so much lower than some of those for sale.
For 2001, there are 5 homes in Surmont, Belgatos and Belwood which sold & closed. The average square footage is 2100, average list price is $984,600 and average sales price is $967,000. Sales prices ranged from the low, low number of $840,000 to a high of $1,090,000.
The market keep changing – we are seeing multiple offers in many areas closer to Palo Alto. It’s not here yet but give it a little time….
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