Bay Area Sales Way Up, Prices Way Down

According to the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday, sales of existing homes in October were up 66.2% from a year ago.  A total of 5,624 homes changed hands in the 9 county Bay Area last month.  Meanwhile, the median price of a resale home dropped from $685,000 to a mere $375,000; a 45.3% freefall.  Nearly half of the homes sold (44.8%) were homes that had been previously forclosed upon.  Last October, forclosure and bank owned home sales comprised only 8.2% of the total.

People are bargain hunting these days, and there are definitely deals to be had.  One of the clients I represent just got into escrow yesterday on a 2 bedroom home for $175,000 less than the house sold for only 2 years ago. In the city of Oakland alone, there are currently 748 homes for sale priced under $200,000.

The median home price has not been this low since 2001.  However, the drop in prices reflects a swing to lower-priced homes in lower-priced areas where bank owned and short sale properties are commonplace, rather than an across the board depreciation of real property.

Counties with the most forclosures saw sales increase the most, and their medians decline the most.  In Contra Costa County, for example, 58.9% of all existing home sales are forclosures or bank owned properties.  The median there is down 48.8% over 2007 numbers. Conversely, in Marin County where only 17.2% of sales have been forclosures, the median was only down 13.1%.

In Oakland, most of these bank owned and foreclosure properties are in the flatlands, which, not suprisingly, is where home values have dropped the most.

If you want to search for homes for sale in the East Bay, I have just added a handy map search function to my website.  Check it out at DougFuller.net.