Bay Area home sales: FALL for 11th straight month

SF Chronicle
Thursday, March 16, 2006


Bay Area home sales tumbled in February for the 11th month in a row and prices appreciated at their slowest rate in two years, as the region's real estate market showed further signs of cooling.

The median price for a single-family home in the nine-county area was $637,000 in February, up 12 percent year over year, but well below November's peak of $656,000. A total of 6,206 condos and houses changed hands, nearly 17 percent below last February's tally, according to real estate information firm DataQuick.

In part, experts attributed the current slowdown to the previous large number of transactions that had been spurred by rock-bottom interest rates. Now that rates are rising, the pool of potential buyers has shrunk.

"The market could go into a lull phase for a while where prices flatten out because we've pulled a lot of (sales) activity from the future," said DataQuick analyst John Karevoll.

Karevoll, whose monthly reports are based on filings with county recorders' offices, expects annual appreciation rates to sink into the single-digits by later this spring.