It's a buyers' real estate market, and sellers are hurting, right? Not most sellers in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County. From Palo Alto to Cupertino, houses are selling faster this month than they were in March 2006. In some places, the sales pace is faster than in 2005.

But in East San Jose and in Gilroy and Morgan Hill, for example, the story is different. So far this year, observing Silicon Valley real estate is like reading a tale of two markets: Homes in some areas are drawing multiple purchase offers and selling quickly, while other neighborhoods are dotted with "for sale" signs that have been in place for months.

"It's quite a dichotomy," said Mark Burns, an agent with Coldwell Banker who also heads the Silicon Valley Association of Realtors. He's listing a two-acre property in Gilroy where interest has been "very slow," he said; on the other hand, in the past two months he has guided five buyers through multiple-offer situations in Campbell, Cambrian, Almaden Valley and Blossom Valley. "We've paid a little bit more" than list price to get some of those homes, he said. "It hasn't been outrageous."

In Los Altos and Palo Alto, it would take just 23 days to exhaust the supply of houses on the market there this week, based on the sales pace of the previous few weeks. That means the market there is moving faster than it was at the same time last year, and also faster than in March 2005, before the nationwide housing market slowdown began.

In the area comprising Cupertino, Mountain View and Sunnyvale, it would take 27 days to sell out the houses on the market this week - a bit less than the 36 days worth of supply from a year earlier, according to data compiled from the local multiple listing service database by Richard Calhoun, owner of Creekside Realty in San Jose.

Calhoun collected the data based on groupings of cities or neighborhoods that tend to be priced similarly and "for the most part are geographically contiguous with one another." His data measures how long it would take to sell all the listed houses given sales pace during the preceding 35 days. Condos and townhouses were not included in the data.

Martine Schepers and her husband, Wim Verhaert, put their four-bedroom Sunnyvale house on the market March 15, priced at $928,000, which they knew was a bit low compared with recent sales. "We hoped we would get $950,000," Schepers said.

Five days later, their agent, Dave Clark of Coldwell Banker, showed them a stack of 14 offers. A few were for more than $1 million. "We were looking at each other like `this can't be happening,'" said Schepers, who is hoping to move back to Belgium, where she and her husband were raised. "We kind of heard it was hot, that the market was pretty good," she said. "We did expect offers to come quickly, just not so many and not this much overbidding."

Undeterred by national news of turmoil in the subprime mortgage sector or the stock market, buyers are competing for some homes in these communities, especially those in the most sought-after school districts, such as Cupertino, Los Altos and Los Gatos. Job growth is also bolstering the market, and many house-hunters are seeking short commutes to tech company jobs.

Demand for homes in these areas is such that some sellers are specifying the date upon which they'll review offers - just like during the boom years from 2003 to mid-2005 - and insisting on "as-is" sales.

"I'm sorry for the buyers, to be frank with you," said Coldwell Banker agent Stacy Chung as she toured a newly listed Cupertino home Thursday. Other agents agreed that the four-bedroom home - perfectly staged, with granite kitchen counters, stainless steel appliances and immaculate wood floors - would sell for more than its $928,000 list price. Chung told of a recent attempt by one of her clients to buy a Saratoga house priced at about $1.4 million. "We put in $120,000 more and didn't get it."

But in Gilroy and Morgan Hill, it would take three months to sell all the houses for sale there this week - more time than last year, and up steeply from the one-month supply in March 2005.

In the East, Central and South San Jose grouping, Calhoun said, it would take nearly five months to sell out the supply of houses. That's up steeply from the previous two years.

East San Jose is not doing as well as most of the county, said Robert Aldana, an agent with Intero Real Estate Services, because "it's impacted because of the no-money down loans that people were getting into."

He and others say two factors are stalling the market on the Eastside. One is that the pool of potential buyers for homes in the area - which are more affordable than in many other parts of the county - is drying up because in recent weeks most mortgage lenders have yanked away the 100-percent-financing deals they used to offer for first-time buyers, and are requiring at least a 5 percent down payment before they'll make a loan.

"A lot of people don't have the 5 percent to put down," said Luis Ochoa of Barajas Real Estate Services.

The other factor is that some owners who bought homes on terms they couldn't afford need to sell now because they're having trouble making their payments. Many of these properties are overpriced, Ochoa said, because the owners are desperately hoping to sell for enough to cover both their mortgage debt and transaction costs.

But the localized slowdown hasn't made it impossible to sell an Eastside house, Aldana said, citing a recent listing of his on Tustin Drive that sold in nine days.

And not every house in the northern part of the county is selling swiftly, said Pat Kapowich of Kapowich Real Estate in Sunnyvale. Properties need to be in good condition and well marketed, he said: "You can't put it on the market and then clean it up."

Some in the real estate business say it's unusual to see a geographical discrepancy emerge between the county's busiest markets and the pokiest ones - what's more common is to see sales activity divided along affordability lines, with high-end homes languishing on the market and more affordable ones selling faster. But others say there's nothing surprising going on.

"I don't think there's anything new about this pattern," Aldana said. "Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto always excel beyond what the East Valley does or the North Valley does."

Calhoun said he thinks real estate trends in Silicon Valley and surrounding regions - whether a slowdown or a boom - often start in the cities near the Santa Clara County/San Mateo County border, and move outward. But this time he's not sure that's what's happening.

"Are we into the next good wave and don't realize it yet?" he said. "I don't think so, but it might be."

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