Have you tried to decide between buying a new house or having one built? If you invest the time and money in building a new house you will want to have some confidence that spending the money to build it will create value which can be sold.
I’ve looked at homes which sold with a listed age of 0 years, then found the previous sale. I’ve plotted the increase in sales price per square foot. For Palo Alto most of the newly built homes have been showing increases of over $400 per square foot since the beginning of 2011. If you can build your new home for around $300 per square foot, you stand an excellent chance of having your home worth more than it cost you to build it.
http://julianalee.com/palo-alto/new-palo-alto-homes.htm
However if you look at Sunnyvale the story is quite different. Very few records were found. Those that were found all show increases of less than $350 per square foot.
http://julianalee.com/sunnyvale/new-sunnyvale-homes.htm