Personal politics aside, Silicon Valley luxury real estate agents had eagerly anticipated a “Trump bump.” During Donald Trump’s first term, a surging stock market and historically low interest rates fueled a homebuying boom — conditions they hoped would reemerge with his return to the presidency.
And, for a while, that’s how it seemed to be playing out.
“Those first two weeks were phenomenal after Inauguration Day,” said Joe Velasco, a real estate agent who operates in the Peninsula and South Bay. “Crypto was up, all the stock markets were up, all the real estate agents were happy.”
But that optimism has dimmed. Velasco and other agents say the Trump administration’s economic and immigration policies have put a big chill on the local real estate market, which runs heavily on tech-industry money.
Unnerved by stock-market volatility brought on by tariffs and widespread revocation of visas, buyers and sellers have been waiting out the uncertainty on the sidelines. One realtor said it has been the slowest spring buying season since the 2008 recession.
“Tech executives are extremely skittish,” said Velasco, who typically works with C-suite buyers from the so-called Magnificent 7 companies, which include Meta, Nvidia, and Apple.
It’s a sharp contrast from last year, when realtors saw cash generated in the AI boom gush into the housing market. Nvidia’s meteoric rise minted hundreds of new millionaires, many of whom poured their gains into Silicon Valley real estate — a trend agents believed would only accelerate in 2025.
But that trajectory stalled abruptly after the introduction of sweeping tariffs on April 2, “Liberation Day,” wiped out more than $6.6 trillion from the U.S. stock market — the largest two-day loss in history.
In the two days after Trump’s tariff announcement, the Magnificent 7 lost more than $1 trillion in market capitalization; Apple and Nvidia lost a collective $520 billion. The stock market has recovered from April lows, but agents say tech executives are spooked by the months of volatility and reluctant to jump back in.
One signal of a cooling market for broker Eric Boyenga was when a Los Gatos home that normally would have been snapped up in a week sat on the market for 30 days in April. Asked to describe the state of a once red-hot housing market, Boyenga chose the word “lackluster.”
“There’s nothing like uncertainty that really makes the market go flat,” said Boyenga, who frequently represents executives from Google, Nvidia, and Palantir. Some of his clients pulled their listings because of Trump’s erratic stance on tariffs and the sharp declines in their stock portfolios. “We’re working very hard for our money right now.”
Velasco, who’s worked the Valley for two decades, said the relationship between the stock market and the real estate market in the Bay Area is stronger than in other parts of the country, because wealth in the tech industry is accumulated typically through IPOs and stock-based compensation.
Usually, his clients have 1.5 to three times the price of the home they plan to purchase in stock. But now that their portfolios are seesawing — a few told Velasco they’d lost 30%-40% of their portfolio value — tech executives are pulling back on their offers.
“They are very skittish to write a full-price offer or anything above asking price,” Velasco said, “And people who don’t need to sell are holding on.”
The one silver lining is an uptick in interest from international buyers looking to move their money out of the U.S. stock market and into the more stable arms of Bay Area real estate. Velasco said he’s been fielding regular calls from China and Canada and recently represented a Singapore-based buyer who sold U.S. stock to buy a $9.5 million Menlo Park mansion.
“They’re just looking for a place to park their money and keep it safe,” Velasco said. Before Trump took office, foreign buyers accounted for 5% of his clients. This year, that proportion has more than doubled, and Velasco expects it will grow.
Beyond economic jitters, another Silicon Valley concern looms large: immigration.
Spencer Hsu, a Palo Alto-based real estate agent whose clientele is predominantly tech workers, said he’s noticed prospective buyers on work visas like H-1Bs becoming uneasy about putting down deeper roots, given the Trump administration’s heightened scrutiny of high-skilled legal immigrants.
“They’re fearful their visas might not get renewed or they might lose their jobs, which means their immigration status is jeopardized,” said Hsu.
Now, as the stock market continues its climb back from April’s lows, agents hope order will eventually be restored to the Silicon Valley real estate market. But with the spring season over, agents will have to wait out the typically quiet summer to see if the fall brings better business.
Boyenga, who leads a team of 10 agents, has told them to brace for Trump’s four years in office to be a “wild ride” for selling real estate. But he’s holding out for a long-term windfall from the AI boom as startups conduct secondary sales and AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Databricks move closer to IPOs.
“This is gonna be one of the biggest booms,” Boyenga said. “You can feel it, no different from when Google and Facebook were building to an IPO.”