Home sales fade, but median prices Mulberry Alexa Bags rise

Bay Area home sales hit an 18-year low for August as the uncertain economy and the expiration of government stimulus kept buyers on the sidelines, according to a real estate report released Thursday.

A total of 6,698 existing houses, new houses and condos changed hands in the nine-county Bay Area in August, down 10.9 percent from August 2009, according to MDA DataQuick of San Diego. Sales of existing single-family homes clocked in at 4,976, also a 10.9 percent drop from a year earlier.

Still, August's slump was nowhere near as precipitous as that in July, when sales fell almost 23 percent from the prior year and 19 percent from the previous month.

"These are exceptionally low sales numbers, the lowest in 18 years" for August, said Andrew LePage, a DataQuick analyst. "It reflects how much demand we stole from the future with the tax credit in the spring, as well as minimal job growth and lots of people worrying about job security. Some folks have just taken Bottega Veneta a step back, and decided to wait and see what kind of deal they may find down the road."

The median price, which is skewed by the mixture of homes sold, ticked upward as more high-end homes and fewer bargain foreclosures changed hands. The median for resold houses was $410,000, up 9.3 percent from a year ago. The median for all homes was $385,000, a 6.9 percent increase.

Few buyers

Wendy Bauman, owner of Oakland's Bauman Group real estate firm, said buyers are in short supply, while inventory is rising.

"Of the buyers who were looking earlier when the tax credit was still going, maybe 10 percent are still looking," she said. "The rest have just decided to bag it for now."

Bauman sells many foreclosures. "A few months ago when the tax credit was running, we had multiple offers on everything," she said. "Now I get properties just sitting and sitting."

Still, life circumstances mean there are always a certain number of buyers and sellers.

Since the birth of their son Judah five weeks ago, Erin Bernstein and David Jorgensen have been considering selling their San Francisco condo and buying a bigger home with a yard in the East Bay.

"I think it's a pretty good time to buy if you can qualify" for a mortgage, said Bernstein, an attorney, as they toured a chalet-style home Mulberry Alexa Bags in the Berkeley hills that heralded its 1970s vintage in everything from the shag-alicious orange carpeting to the outdated kitchen. The house, which features panoramic views, was listed at $525,000 - far less than it would have gone for a few years ago.

Unlike many buyers who seek move-in perfection, the couple would like to stretch their purchasing power with a fixer-upper.

"We could live with an ugly kitchen," Bernstein said. "It would be nice to get a home where we could put time and energy into it."

The DataQuick report also showed that 26.7 percent of all existing Bay Area homes sold in August were foreclosures, about the same as in July.

Foreclosure sales are shrinking. A year ago about a third of sales were foreclosures; in February 2009 bank-owned properties represented slightly over half the sold homes.

Many cash sales

Investor activity continues to be strong. All-cash sales, often a hallmark of investors, accounted for a quarter of August's sales, and focused on properties with a median price of $250,000. Historically, cash sales have represented about Mulberry 11.3 percent of the Bay Area market.

Sales of new homes were at their lowest August level since 1993, with just 434 new homes sold in all nine counties, 30.2 percent fewer than a year ago.

Sales of existing condos held steady, with 1,288 changing hands in August, 1.6 percent below the year-ago level.