The Rise Is Bringing 2,669 Homes to Cupertino. None of Them Are Single-Family Houses.

Fifty acres of graded dirt sit behind chain-link fencing at Wolfe Road and I-280 right now. The demolition crews finished tearing down what was left of Vallco Shopping Mall months ago. Underground utilities are in. Streets are staked out on paper if not yet in concrete. What isn't there yet is a single vertical structure, though Sand Hill Property Company has told Cupertino officials it plans to start building up rather than out sometime before the end of 2026.

When people talk about this project, called The Rise, the number that gets repeated is 2,669. That's the total residential unit count once the entire mixed-use district is built out. It's a real number, tied to real filings, and it's easy to hear it and assume Cupertino's tightest-in-the-region housing market is about to get some breathing room.

It won't, at least not in the part of the market most buyers are actually fighting over. The Rise sits on land zoned Regional Commercial/Residential mixed use, a former shopping mall parking lot. Every one of those 2,669 units will be an apartment or condo in a walkable, retail-anchored district. There is no detached house, no yard, no driveway anywhere in the plan. If you're comparing a $3.5 million single-family listing in Cupertino against a comparable one in Santa Clara or Sunnyvale, The Rise changes nothing about that math, this year or in 2028 or afterward.

What's Actually Approved So Far

For most of the last decade, the fight over this site was about whether it would get built at all. Litigation, ballot measures, and a state streamlining law called SB 35 kept that question open. It's closed now. What's left is construction paperwork, and the two most recent approvals show how far the project has moved from concept toward concrete.

On July 21, 2026, the Cupertino City Council reviewed and approved the Final Map for Phase 1, tract number 10706, along with a Subdivision Improvement Agreement covering streets, easements, and infrastructure. A final map isn't a rendering. It's the document that turns an approved concept into legally defined parcels a title company can actually insure.

On August 24, 2026, the city approved Modification #4, a partial plan revision affecting Blocks 1 and 2, filed on behalf of the project's master developer in coordination with an applicant called Black Pine LLC, working with Hines Construction. The unit counts didn't change. Block 1 stays at 235 homes and Block 2 at 258, a combined 493. What did change was more mundane: added parking for residents, a new retail parking entrance off a street the plans label Street A, and a relocated loading and waste-management area. The filing states plainly that no home pricing, floor plans, HOA dues, or sales timeline have been announced. This is a building department working through detail, not a marketing rollout.

Why the Headline Number Doesn't Move the Detached-House Market

The 2,669 figure covers the entire build-out across every phase. The portion actually under construction now, called Town Square West, totals 1,369 units: 232 deed-restricted affordable rentals, 744 market-rate rentals, and 393 homes built for sale. That 393 is the only slice of this entire project that will ever show up as a purchase on an MLS.

Three hundred ninety-three condo and townhome-style units, arriving no earlier than 2028, priced to compete with existing condos and townhomes rather than with detached houses. Cupertino's single-family inventory problem is a zoning and lot-supply problem. The city has a fixed stock of R-1 parcels and isn't creating more of them. The Rise doesn't touch that supply, because it was never zoned to.

The Timeline Behind the Timeline

The affordable housing component tells its own story about how this project actually gets financed and sequenced. In late November 2025, Sand Hill Property Company submitted a revised plan to Cupertino's city manager proposing to cut affordable housing by 60% and office space by 25%, citing financial feasibility. The filing landed the day before Thanksgiving, and Cupertino's mayor, Liang Chao, publicly flagged that the timing meant the city would review it during a stretch when scrutiny tends to be lighter. Because the project moves forward under SB 35, the city's options to push back were limited to a 60-day response window rather than a full discretionary hearing.

The plan that emerged from that process is what's under construction now: roughly 356 affordable homes across the full build-out, down from earlier iterations, with a 232-unit affordable building as the first structure planned to go vertical. That sequencing isn't a gesture of priority. Low-income housing tax credit financing runs on annual allocation cycles, and the developer has tied keeping that first affordable building on schedule to holding its place in the 2026 tax credit round. The 393 for-sale homes, the only units a buyer could eventually purchase, sit later in the construction sequence behind the rental and affordable phases.

What the Market Actually Looks Like While Everyone Waits

Here's where the numbers get genuinely confusing if you're pulling from more than one source, and the confusion itself is worth understanding rather than picking a side.

The blended Redfin figure and the single-family-only figure aren't contradicting each other. They're measuring different pools. Redfin's median blends every closed sale, condos included, so it sits lower than the single-family-only number pulled from the same stretch of the market. When the single-family segment is trading at $3.5 million and the citywide blended median reads $2.9 million, that gap is telling you how much of the month's volume came from the condo and townhome side, not that detached-home prices are softening.

The single-family numbers are also volatile in a way that has nothing to do with market direction. When only 23 detached houses close citywide in a given month, one or two higher-end sales can swing the median by six figures without any real shift in what buyers are willing to pay. Treat any single month's single-family median here as a data point, not a trend line.

The broader picture right now is that Cupertino has fewer than three dozen active single-family listings at any given time, with most homes selling above asking. Nothing about The Rise's current construction stage changes that in the next twelve to twenty-four months. The first buildings breaking ground are rentals and affordable housing. The 393 for-sale units are scheduled behind them.

If You're Watching the Condo Pool Instead

For a buyer whose realistic budget sits in Cupertino's condo and townhome range rather than the single-family tier, The Rise is worth tracking, just not for the reason the headline number suggests. When those 393 units eventually reach the market, they'll be new construction inside a walkable district with retail and open space built around them, competing against a resale condo stock currently trading at a median of $1.5 million. New construction in this market rarely undercuts existing resale pricing. It's more likely to set a new ceiling for what a Cupertino condo costs than to offer a discount against one.

Nothing about pricing, floor plans, or a sales release has been announced in any filing reviewed here. Anyone quoting a firm number for those units right now is guessing.

A Few Questions Worth Settling Now

Will The Rise include any single-family homes? No. The site is zoned Regional Commercial/Residential mixed use, and every planned unit across all 2,669 is an apartment or condo-style residence.

When can someone actually buy one of the for-sale units? Not yet. The most recent city filings reviewed here state directly that pricing, HOA structure, and a sales timeline haven't been announced. Construction on the first buildings, the affordable rental component, is targeted to begin before the end of 2026.

Does this project affect single-family home prices in Cupertino at all? Not directly, and not soon. Detached-house supply in Cupertino is constrained by the city's fixed R-1 zoning, and The Rise doesn't add to that inventory in any phase of its build-out.

If you're weighing a Cupertino purchase against Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, or another South Bay neighborhood and want a straight read on what a specific budget actually buys right now, rather than what a headline about a future project implies, that's the conversation worth having before you write an offer. Taylor Lambert Group tracks these filings as they move through the city so you're planning around what's actually approved, not around a timeline that hasn't been set yet.