NorCal median home price plummets 41 percent

[Newsjock]

Source: Associated Press

A real estate tracking firm says the median home price plunged 41 percent last month in a nine-county region around San Francisco Bay, as homebuyers snapped up homes that had been foreclosed and otherwise discounted.

Figures released Thursday by MDA DataQuick show the median sale price in the region declined to $375,000 October, compared to $631,000 in the year-ago period.

October's median was down 6.3 percent from September and nearly 44 percent below the peak median of $665,000 in the summer of 2007.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/11/18/financial/f094910S32.DTL&tsp=1

[CountAllVotes]

1. my late brother bought a house in northern Calif. in 2000

he paid $320,000.00 for it. It is now priced at ~$340,000.00 (tops) if a buyer could be found.

:kick:

[mike_c]

2. that's a step in the right direction....

I'm hoping to see a great deal more than that, however. Remember, the Bay Area has one of the most inflated property markets in the country. Prices there have not reflected real value for a long time. The same is true in my neck of Norcal (northern Humboldt Co). I want to see home prices at least 50 percent lower than they were at the peak of the real estate bubble, when only 12-14 percent of residents in my community were able to afford a median priced home. That is just wrong.

[Journeyman]

3. I hope to see similar price drops here in South California, too. . .

I'd like for my kids to be able to afford to live near me, which would be an impossibility with homes priced as they've been the past few years.

[kestrel91316]

5. Too bad the RENTS here haven't dropped at all. I'm still paying

almost $1300 for a 1-BR underinsulated 1970 apartment and have to rent a $90/mo storage unit for things I can't shoehorn into the apt.

[Gormy Cuss]

6. Unfortunately, this steep decline may be an anomaly.

What's driving the numbers in the past few months are bargain hunters buying foreclosures. The real decline in value from peak for all housing in the nine counties is between 10-20%, depending on community. There's still a long way to go before the affordability index is in an acceptable range. Still, at least some people are benefiting from the foreclosures and buying housing that was far too expensive a couple of years ago. I suspect that many of the properties snapped up at these low prices went to investors, but that's just my guess.

Within the Bay Area, most of the bargains are on the outskirts in Solano and eastern Contra Costa counties. Houses out there have dropped by 50% or more from values just two years ago.

Prices now are pretty soft in the next tier closer to the city too.

[2Design]

7. driver is housing should only be 2 to 3 times income - it is 5-10 times most people income

prices have to come down or wages have to go up

[truedelphi]

8. Wages going up probably will not be happening any time soon

We the taxpayers just gave 700 Billion to a guy in Treasury who is using it to have banks buy other banks, per his whim.

Then the banks have even more power and can dothings like purchase the rights to your local water utily.

We are so screwn <sigh>

[Gormy Cuss]

10. Yes, but this has been an unusually sustained high priced market area

and even in previous troughs it hasn't dropped down to that level of affordability. The problem in the Bay Area is too little high density development -- that creates a chronic shortage of properties in an area with a high degree of desirability.

[snooper2]

4. So now they are that much closer to the real value...

nt.

[GodlessBiker]

9. The only "real value" is the price someone is willing to pay for it.