A recession hasn´t slowed home-buying in Silicon Valley.

Real estate companies are reporting fierce competition in the first two months of the new year. Some believe the spark in demand is related to a scarcity of homes for sale and low interest rates

at about 7 percent.

Nina Yamaguchi is a managing broker for Coldwell Banker in Cupertino. She says the housing market is almost as crazy as it was in 2000, with everyone wanting to buy at the bottom of the market at the bottom of interest rates.

Santa Clara County is reporting more than 12-hundred homes sold in January. That´s a 70 percent jump from home-buying last year. San Mateo County also reports more transactions. There were 463 single-family home buys in January, up 45 percent from the previous year.