California Homes Up 54% In Five Years

January 28, 2002

DataQuick Reports San Francisco Bay Area Sales Down, But Prices Rise


Inman News Features

San Francisco Bay Area home sales ended the year with a slight price increase while sales counts were off from 2000 levels, a real estate information service reported.

A total of 7,725 new and resale houses and condominiums were sold in the nine-county region last month. That figure was up 16.3 percent from 6,644 for November, and down 9.3 percent from 8,515 for December a year ago, according to DataQuick Information Systems.

A total of 77,271 homes sold in the region in all of 2001, down 17.3 percent from 93,423 for the year before.

California home prices overall increased 53.5 percent from $155,000 to $238,000 during the last five years. The Bay Area median increased 66.1 percent from $227,000 to last month's $377,000 during the five-year period.

"I've heard people talking of the bottom falling out of the Bay Area real estate market, but that's not happening. There certainly was over-exuberance a year and a half ago, but today's market is back to relative normalcy," said DataQuick President Mike Ela.

The median price paid for a Bay Area home was $377,000 last month. That was up 2.4 percent from $368,000 in November and 1.1 percent from $373,000 for December a year ago. The median peaked at $386,000 in March.

The median for all of last year was $377,000, up 7.1 percent from $352,000 for 2000. But the whole-year increase by local area ranged from 2.1 percent in Santa Clara County to 19.5 percent in Napa County.

Copyright: Inman News Service


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