Ask anyone tracking Cupertino real estate what they know about The Rise, the redevelopment of the old Vallco Mall site, and you will hear one number back almost every time: 2,669 new homes. It shows up in city staff reports, developer presentations, and every local news recap of the project's decade-long saga. It is the number that gets repeated at open houses when a buyer, tired of losing bidding wars, asks whether relief is coming.
It is also the wrong number to plan around. The figure that actually matters for someone deciding whether to buy in Cupertino this year or wait is smaller, slower to arrive, and aimed at a different slice of the housing stock than most buyers assume.
What's Actually Being Built, and When
The Rise sits on 50 acres near the I-280 and North Wolfe Road interchange, close to Apple Park and Main Street Cupertino. The site has been fought over since the original Vallco Town Center plan was approved under California's SB 35 streamlining law back in 2018, a process that has since run through litigation, referendums, and years of revisions between developer Sand Hill Property Company and the city.
That fight reached a milestone this year. On February 27, 2026, Cupertino approved Sand Hill's third modification to the project. Vertical construction, meaning actual buildings rather than demolition and grading, is targeted to begin later in 2026. The first phase, called Town Square West, is expected to bring its earliest finished homes online in 2028.
Here is the timeline in order:
- 2018 – The original Vallco project is approved under SB 35 after years of legal and political conflict.
- November 26, 2025 – Sand Hill submits a revised plan to the city, cutting the project's affordable housing and office space.
- February 27, 2026 – Cupertino approves the third project modification.
- 2026 – Vertical construction is scheduled to begin on Town Square West.
- 2028 – First occupancy is expected, if the current schedule holds.
Two years from ground-up construction to a resident holding keys is a normal timeline for a project this size. It is also two years a buyer weighing a purchase today does not have if they are hoping new supply changes their negotiating position before then.
The Math Nobody Runs on the Headline Number
The 2,669 figure describes the full buildout of The Rise across every future phase. Town Square West, the only phase with an actual construction schedule right now, breaks down like this:
| Unit Type | Count |
|---|---|
| Affordable rental homes | 232 |
| Market-rate rental homes | 744 |
| For-sale homes | 393 |
| Total, Town Square West | 1,369 |
Of the 1,369 homes in the only phase currently moving forward, 976 are rentals. Just 393 will be available for someone to actually buy. That is about 15 percent of the full 2,669 figure that gets quoted as if it describes buying opportunity across the board.
There is a second layer to this that rarely makes it into the coverage. A project of this density, on a 50-acre former mall site, is not going to deliver detached single-family homes. The for-sale product at Town Square West will be condominiums and townhomes built alongside roughly 200,000 square feet of retail, which the developer says represents close to 90 percent of the project's total planned retail footprint for this phase. That matters because Cupertino's tightest, most expensive, most competitive segment is not condos. It is detached single-family houses, and nothing in Town Square West adds to that supply.
The Cut That Tells You How Fragile This Timeline Really Is
The revised plan Sand Hill submitted in November 2025 did more than shuffle unit counts. It cut the project's total affordable housing from 890 units to 356, along with roughly 500,000 square feet of office space and two planned office buildings. The developer's stated reason was straightforward: the original numbers were no longer financially workable given current construction costs and financing conditions.
The timing of that submission drew its own scrutiny. Cupertino Mayor Liang Chao said publicly that Sand Hill filed the revision the day before Thanksgiving, which she suggested was a deliberate move to push the city's 60-day review window through the holidays, when fewer people are paying close attention.
Because The Rise moves forward under SB 35, the city has limited ability to reject changes like this outright. State law is designed to keep projects like this moving even when a city objects, which is part of why a project first approved in 2018 is only now, in 2026, breaking ground on its first phase.
The lesson for a buyer is not about politics. It is about reliability. A project that just cut its affordable housing commitment by 60 percent in order to stay financially viable is not a project anyone should treat as a fixed, guaranteed source of future relief. Costs can rise again. Financing can tighten again. The schedule that says 2028 today is the same kind of schedule that, in 2018, said something very different.
What the Current Market Actually Looks Like While You Wait
None of this happens in a vacuum. As of May 2026, the single-family home segment in Cupertino sold at a median price of roughly $3.55 million over the trailing three months, up about 4.4 percent over that window. Single-family homes were selling in a median of seven days. Only 23 single-family homes sold in the entire city that month. Condos and townhomes, the segment that will eventually see new competition from Town Square West, carried a lower median of roughly $1.5 million over the same period, a market that has historically had more room to breathe than the detached-home tier.
That single-family scarcity is worth sitting with. Different market trackers have reported Cupertino's citywide median sale price anywhere from the mid $2 millions to north of $3 million depending on the month and which mix of homes happened to close. That is not sloppy reporting. It is what happens in a market thin enough that a handful of large estate sales in one month, or a run of smaller starter homes the next, can swing the median by hundreds of thousands of dollars. A market that volatile on its own month-to-month noise is not a market where a trickle of 393 attached, mostly non-competing homes arriving in 2028 is going to register as meaningful relief.
Where Relief Might Eventually Show Up, and Where It Won't
If you are shopping condos or townhomes in Cupertino, Town Square West is a phase worth tracking over the next couple of years. New for-sale inventory in that segment, even a few hundred units, is a bigger proportional addition to a smaller, already softer market tier.
If you are shopping detached single-family homes, which is where most of the pricing pressure and bidding-war stories in Cupertino actually live, The Rise does not change your math. The phase under construction adds zero detached homes. Later phases of the 2,669-unit buildout are not yet scheduled, financed, or immune from the kind of cost pressure that just forced a 60 percent cut to affordable units in phase one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will home prices in Cupertino drop once The Rise opens? Nothing in the current construction plan suggests it. The only phase under active development adds mostly rental units and a small number of condos and townhomes, not the detached single-family homes that drive Cupertino's tightest pricing.
Should a first-time buyer wait for the 393 new for-sale homes at Town Square West? That depends on what you are shopping for. If you want a condo or townhome, it is reasonable to watch the 2028 delivery window. If you are hoping it eases competition for a house, the timeline and unit mix do not support that expectation.
Does The Rise change anything for buyers focused on the Main Street Cupertino or Apple Park area? The Rise sits close to both, and the retail component planned for Town Square West, roughly 200,000 square feet, will add commercial activity to that immediate corridor. That is a neighborhood amenity story more than a home-price story for now.
Cupertino's market moves fast enough that most of what shapes it this year will have nothing to do with a construction schedule that is still about two years from its first delivery. If you are weighing whether to buy now, wait, or reposition ahead of what The Rise eventually delivers, VKG Real Estate Group can walk through what the current inventory, pricing, and timeline actually mean for your specific search. Get a Free Home Valuation to start the conversation with numbers instead of headlines.
