Cupertino Vallco Rise Home Values: Is Waiting Worth It?
August 13, 2026
August 13, 2026
Two projects moved through Cupertino's planning process this year. One is a 2,669-home redevelopment of the old Vallco Mall that took a decade of lawsuits and ballot fights to get this far. The other is a 32-unit townhome project on a single 1.77-acre lot along Stevens Creek Boulevard that a divided council approved with almost no fanfare. The big one made headlines. The small one is actually closer to delivering homes.
If you're comparing Cupertino to other South Bay cities right now and wondering whether to wait for The Rise to add supply before you buy, that gap between the two projects is the number that matters more than the headline count of 2,669.
This past February, Cupertino approved updated plans for The Rise under California's SB 35 streamlining process. The developer, Sand Hill Property Company, kept the overall unit count at 2,669 homes but reworked the mix of affordable housing, office space, retail, and site design underneath that number.
The first phase, called Town Square West, is where the near-term action is. It's planned to include 1,369 homes split between 232 affordable family rentals, 744 market-rate rentals, and 393 for-sale units, along with roughly 202,000 square feet of retail and just over three acres of parks. Sand Hill has told the city it expects vertical construction to begin in 2026, with the first residents potentially moving in by 2028. That's the entire first phase of an eight-block buildout on a 50-acre site at Stevens Creek Boulevard and Wolfe Road, not the whole project.
The detail buyers should sit with is what changed between the second and third versions of the plan. Sand Hill's November 2025 revision, submitted the day before Thanksgiving, cut affordable housing by 60 percent and office space by 25 percent to keep the project what the company called financially feasible.
A developer doesn't shrink the affordable component of a project it has spent a decade defending in court unless the original numbers stopped working at current construction costs. That's a market signal, not just a policy footnote. Cupertino's mayor at the time, Liang Chao, said publicly that the timing of the filing looked designed to move through review during the holiday season with less scrutiny. Sand Hill's response was that it wanted the review period to start after Thanksgiving to keep the project moving forward collaboratively. Whichever read you take, the substance of the cut is the same: even the company building The Rise is telling the city it can't deliver everything it once promised, on the timeline it once promised.
While The Rise worked through its third modification, a much smaller project a short walk away cleared its final hurdle with almost no drama. This past winter, Cupertino's City Council voted 4-0, with one abstention, to approve Dividend Homes' plan for 32 townhouse-style units on a 1.77-acre mid-block site on Stevens Creek Boulevard, replacing three low-rise office buildings with three-story homes topping out around 45 feet.
Six of the 32 units are reserved for moderate-income buyers, with the rest sold at market rate. Unlike The Rise, which is moving under SB 35, the Dividend Homes project used SB 330, a different state streamlining law aimed at smaller infill sites. Units are planned to run roughly 1,548 to 2,156 square feet. As of this April, the company hadn't released a construction schedule or a budget, so there's no promised delivery date to compare against The Rise's 2028 target. But the entitlement process itself moved in months, not years, which tells you something about where near-term inventory in this corridor is actually likely to come from.
Here's the side-by-side that matters for anyone timing a purchase:
One project is a decade in the making with a phased 2028 horizon for its first slice. The other is a fraction of the size and already has its approvals in hand. If you're trying to guess which kind of project will actually put move-in-ready homes on the market first, the small one is the better bet.
None of this is theoretical if you're shopping in Cupertino this month. As of May 2026, there were only 41 active single-family listings across the entire city, and single-family homes were selling in a median of 7 days. Over the three months ending in April 2026, the median sale price across all home types reached $3.2 million, up 15.6 percent from the same period a year earlier. Condos and townhouses, the category The Rise and the Dividend Homes project both fall into, carried a median sale price of $1.5 million in May 2026.
That's the market a buyer is choosing to sit out if they decide to wait for The Rise to change the equation. Even in the most optimistic case, where Sand Hill hits its 2026 construction start and its 2028 occupancy target for Town Square West, that's roughly 393 for-sale homes entering a city that sold only 69 homes total in April 2026. It's meaningful new supply eventually. It is not a release valve for a market this tight today.
Buyers weighing established neighborhoods near the Vallco site, places like Rancho Rinconada, Monta Vista, Garden Gate, and Homestead Villa, are the ones most likely to feel some effect from The Rise once it's built, whether that's added walkability and retail or added traffic and construction noise in the meantime. Rancho Rinconada in particular sits just up Stevens Creek Boulevard from the project and has historically offered a more approachable entry point into Cupertino's school boundaries than the immediate Monta Vista area, without leaving the same zip code.
If a specific street is close enough to the construction zone to matter to you, the useful exercise isn't guessing what The Rise will do to values in five years. It's running a comparative market analysis on that block against comparable streets a few minutes farther away, right now, to see whether the current market is already pricing in a premium, a discount, or nothing at all. That spread tells you more about how buyers are actually treating proximity to the project today than any renderings or press release can.
Is Rancho Rinconada part of The Rise development? No. Rancho Rinconada is an established residential neighborhood in eastern Cupertino. The Rise is being built on the former Vallco Mall site along Stevens Creek Boulevard and Wolfe Road, a short drive or walk from parts of Rancho Rinconada, but it's a separate property.
When will the first homes at The Rise actually be ready? Based on Sand Hill's current schedule, vertical construction on the Town Square West phase could start in 2026, with the earliest occupancy around 2028. That covers 1,369 of the project's total 2,669 planned homes. The remaining phases don't have public timelines yet.
Should I wait to buy until The Rise adds more supply? Given that the first phase isn't expected to deliver homes until 2028 at the earliest, and current inventory is already down to roughly 41 active single-family listings citywide as of May 2026, most buyers are better served making a decision based on what's actually on the market today rather than holding out for a project whose scope has already shrunk once.
If you're trying to figure out what a specific Cupertino block is worth right now, or how a property near Stevens Creek Boulevard is likely to be treated by today's buyers, that's a conversation worth having before you write an offer, not after. Ashley Mateo works this market street by street and can walk you through the comparables that actually apply to your situation. Get your instant home valuation to see where your Cupertino property stands today.
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