Volume Up (Thanks to Foreclosures); Median Prices Down For Bay Area Residential Real Estate

DataQuick released its February numbers, and they reveal that overall Bay Area real estate prices continue their march down. YoY, median home prices in the Bay Area are off by some 46%. New home builders were perhaps hit the hardest as they were only able to close 321 sales last month, a 55% decline from 713 in the year ago period. That is the second lowest volume of new home sales in the Bay Area since 1988.

The report also discussed financing:

• 24.9 percent of all Bay Area purchase loans last month were FHA loans.
• Before August 2007, jumbo loans accounted for 62% of Bay Area home purchases. In February, that number was 17.5%

As a result of the jumbo lending market being constricted, “sales of existing single-family houses fell to record-low or near-record-low levels for a February in some higher-end communities. They included Orinda, Walnut Creek, San Rafael, San Francisco, Burlingame, San Mateo, Los Gatos, and Los Altos.”

And with respect to fear and a return of sensibility to the market:

The typical monthly mortgage payment that Bay Area buyers committed themselves to paying was $1,286 last month, down from $1,297 the previous month, and down from $2,606 a year ago. Adjusted for inflation, current payments are 50.2 percent below typical payments in the spring of 1989, the peak of the prior real estate cycle. They are 63.2 percent below the current cycle’s peak in July 2007.

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