Bay Area homes sales surge, but price decline continues
By Eve Mitchell
SAN MATEO COUNTY TIMES STAFF WRITER
The median price of a Bay Area home stood at $330,000 in December, or half what is was when prices peaked 18 months ago, as a glut of foreclosures continue to drive home sales up and median prices down, according to a report released Wednesday by MDA DataQuick. For the month of December in the Bay Area, some 6,889 new and existing single-family houses and condos changed hands, a 36 percent increase from December 2007 while the year-to-year median sales price dropped 43.8 percent to $330,000 from $587,500. The median price is half of the peak price level of $665,000 reached in June and July 2007. The median is the point at which half the homes sell for more and half sell for less. "It would be wrong to say that Bay Area home values are half of what they were a year-and-a-half ago. We're figuring that maybe half of the decline is a market mix issue, and the rest a drop in value," John Walsh, DataQuick MDA president said in a statement. Fifty percent of last month's home sales involved existing home sales that had been lost to foreclosure sometime in the last 12 months. That's up from 46.8 percent in November 2008 and 14 percent in December 2007. Parts of the East Bay are getting hit harder by foreclosures than the Peninsula, where a shortage of buildable land restricts new housing developments. Foreclosures accounted for 27.3 percent of resale home transactions in San Mateo County. "There are still people looking for bargains out there and people going for foreclosures and short sales (which is when a home is sold for less than the amount due on the mortgage)" said Tammy Silvestri, a Realtor with the Burlingame office of Coldwell Banker. Still, she expect these type of sales to taper off in the next month or two in San Mateo County. "On the Peninsula here, I think we have hit the bottom and things are going to stabilize and start going up," Silvestri said. While home prices continued to fall, average monthly rents paid in buildings that have 50 units and larger dropped 2.4 percent to $1,772 from September to December in San Mateo County, according to separate report issued by Novato-based RealFacts.
- Written by Joe
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