Prices decline in US

Bloomberg

Home prices in the San Francisco Bay Area plunged a record 41 percent and sales rose in October from a year earlier as purchases of foreclosure properties reduced values, MDA DataQuick said.

A total of 7,613 new and resale houses and condominiums sold in the nine-county Bay Area. The 39 percent jump was the largest sales increase since June 2007, the San Diego-based research firm said Thursday in a report. Inland counties including Contra Costa, Napa and Solano accounted for more than a third of total sales.

The Bay Area median price fell to $375,000, the 11th consecutive monthly decline on a year-on-year basis.

"The dramatic, near free-fall in the Bay Area’s median sale price in recent months stems mainly from the shift toward more sales occurring in lower-cost inland markets," John Walsh, MDA DataQuick president, said in a statement. "At the same time, the role of foreclosures continued to grow across the region, adding more downward pressure to the median," he said.

The October median price was 44 percent below the $665,000 peak reached in June, July and August 2007 and 6 percent below last month’s $400,000, according to MDA DataQuick, a unit of Richmond, British Columbia-based MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates.

Contra Costa tumbles
Prices fell in all nine counties, led by a 46 percent decline in Contra Costa. Prices dropped 39 percent in Solano, 35 percent in Alameda, 32 percent in Marin, 30 percent in Santa Clara and Sonoma, 27 percent in Napa, 22 percent in San Mateo and 12 percent in San Francisco, DataQuick said.

Sales rose in eight of nine counties, led by Solano with a 141 percent gain. Sales advanced 90 percent in Napa, 87 percent in Contra Costa, 70 percent in Sonoma, 41 percent in Alameda, 10 percent in Santa Clara, 4 percent in San Mateo and 2 percent in Marin. San Francisco had the only decline, falling 21 percent.

Sales of properties whose owners have been foreclosed on, along with so-called short sales in which lenders agree to sell to new buyers for less than the amount owed on mortgages, are driving down prices, said Connie Reynolds, escrow coordinator at the RE/MAX Gold-Miller Team brokerage in Solano County’s Vallejo.

A home similar to the three-bedroom Vallejo house that her 29-year-old son, Beau, bought last December for $400,000 can now be bought for about $275,000, Reynolds said. Vallejo, on the north edge of the San Francisco Bay, sought bankruptcy protection in May as declining values cut tax revenue from homeowners and retailers.

"It’s in a great area with a view, but he’s lost at least $100,000" in equity as prices plunge, Reynolds said.

About 45 percent of homes sold in the Bay Area in October had been foreclosed on in the prior 12 months, more than five times the share from a year ago, DataQuick said.