Your EXACT words....
highlighted red...
Enigma869 wrote:journel wrote:still $3.50/gallon here...sf bay area!
Right, and
the median home price in The Bay Area is still something completely ridiculous, like $700K for a shack! The Bay Area is NEVER a good barometer for what is going on in the rest of the country. Beautiful part of the country, but flippin EXPENSIVE!
John from Boston
My EXACT response... "
Median price of a home in SF Bay Area is $400K"
To which you respond....
Enigma869 wrote:That is absolutely FALSE! Perhaps if you're speaking of an entire area, and not talking about San Francisco! The median price of a home in San Francisco has been NOWHERE near $400K, in probably 15 years! As of 4 days ago, the San Francisco market (which includes Brisbane, Broadmoor Village, Colma, Daly City, Millbrae, San Bruno, South San Francisco) is down 7.1% over the past year, but still has a median price of $650K, so my original estimate wasn't that far off!
http://www.housingtracker.net/old_housi ... Francisco/John from Boston
I never said San Francisco
specifically... It appears I'm less "false" than you are....
http://www.mercurynews.com/realestatenews/ci_10499209
Foreclosures batter Bay Area median home price
By Eve Mitchell
STAFF WRITER
Article Launched: 09/18/2008 11:40:44 AM PDT
It used to be location drove the real estate market.
Now it seems like foreclosure sales are in the drivers seat, pushing down
the median price of a Bay Area home sold in August to a record low of $447,000, almost a third less than a year ago, said a report released Thursday by MDA DataQuick.
Throughout the Bay Area, sales of homes that had been foreclosed upon in the last 12 months accounted for 36.1 percent of all resales in August, compared to just 4.4 percent a year ago and 33.3 percent in July.
While home sales declined 0.9 percent in the Bay Area from a year ago, Contra Costa County and Solano County saw a big jump in sales along with big price drops during the same time period as bargain hunters snapped up distressed properties in areas that have been hit hard by the foreclosure crisis.
Having a high level of foreclosures in a neighborhood may be good news for buyers, but it can force sellers who are not in foreclosure to lower prices in order to compete. Banks typically discount foreclosed properties to move them.
"It sort of establishes a new pricing threshold and that's difficult for sellers who are current on their mortgage and are selling not out of duress," said Earl Rozran, branch manager of the Pleasanton/Hopyard office of Prudential California Realty.
Before housing prices can start to rise, foreclosed homes that are on the market have to be cleared out.
The fact that more than one third of Bay Area resales involved foreclosed properties last month is a mixed bag when it comes to evaluating where the market is going, said Matt Anderson, a partner at Oakland-based Foresight Analytics, a real estate analysis and forecasting firm.
"Prices have fallen to the point where there is increased interest and people are putting fresh money into the market. It's primarily the low prices that are bringing people in," he said.
In August, a total of 7,232 new and resale houses and condos changed hands in the Bay Area, a 4.7 percent drop from July. The median sales price of $447,000 was down 4.9 percent from July and off 31.8 percent from a year ago. Last month's median price was the lowest since January 2004.
The median price is the point at which half of the homes sell for more and half sell for less.
The percentage of resales that were foreclosed properties varied in the Bay Area, ranging from 8.6 percent in San Francisco to 61.3 percent in Solano County. Foreclosure sales accounted for 54.4 percent of resale activity in Contra Costa County, 32.5 percent in Alameda County and 16.6 percent in San Mateo County. In San Joaquin County, they accounted for 73.7% percent of resale activity.
Steve Dhillon, a Fremont-based Realtor with Realty Experts, said buyers are showing interest in foreclosures.
"Many of my clients are taking the plunge, buying a foreclosed property such as a three-bedroom house in Union City for 35 percent less than it sold for in 2006,'' he wrote in an e-mail.
"They feel they can negotiate for a stronger and better deal," said Rozran. Purchasers of foreclosed properties he's worked with have included first-time home buyers and parents buying homes for their children.
Listings of short sales and foreclosed properties are no longer just associated with outlying areas of eastern Contra Costa County such as Antioch and Brentwood.
In Pleasanton, 15 percent of the 308 homes now on the market are either bank-owned foreclosure sales or short sales, according to statistics from the Tri-Valley multiple listing service. That number is 44 percent of Livermore's inventory of 437 homes and 36 percent of Dublin's inventory of 191 homes.
A short sale is when a lender gives approval for a home to be sold for less than the loan amount in order to avoid foreclosures.
"It's really sort of beginning to permeate the whole area. We had felt here in the Tri-Valley that the problem was kind of isolated to eastern Contra Costa County, maybe parts of Solano (County)," said Rozran, of Prudential California Realty. "It is no longer the exception."
On the Peninsula, foreclosure activity is still more of the exception. Only 16.6 percent of San Mateo County's resale activity involved foreclosed properties. Most of those transactions are occurring in the northern part of the county and in East Palo Alto, said Sue Walsh, a Realtor with the Burlingame office of Cashin Co. Realtors.
A large factor in the year-to-year 23.4 percent drop in home sales in the county is that many sellers are reluctant to list their properties in today's market.
"We are not seeing listings. That coincides with the sales," she said.
Despite the price-dragging impact of foreclosures, many buyers are still reluctant to purchase a home because they believe home prices will continue to fall, said Rozran.
He advises such buyers to make an offer on a house that discounts how much they expect prices to drop in the coming months. "You have to build that into the purchase price," Rozran said.
