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Silicon Valley's tech boom has not slowed, despite earlier prognostications. San Francisco's average home price had the biggest six-month increase in history this year, per analysis by local real estate agency Paragon.
In dollars and cents, that translates to an additional $205,000 in the first half of 2018, with the average house now costing about $1.62 million. Several factors have been attributed to Silicon Valley's continued boom, including the tech IPO market, which is having its best year in many, CNBC reports, particularly for software companies like Dropbox and Zuora. Also, established tech giants including Netflix, Alphabet, Apple, Facebook, Salesforce, and others are still growing revenues, staff, and share prices.
It's worth recalling that a lot of people in Silicon Valley were bracing for a slowdown in 2015. Venture investors like Bill Gurley were predicting that long-running start-ups would have to raise rounds at lower valuations because their last rounds came with restrictive conditions for future investors but they weren't ready to go public yet. Start-ups cracked down on expenses. Apple's share price actually dropped during the year, as investors grew concerned about slowing iPhone sales and the prospect of a general downturn. The next year, Intel and Cisco both laid off several thousand employees apiece.
