San Francisco Home Buyers Remain Cautious
Home sales in the San Francisco area fell for the ninth consecutive month in December and the region’s median home price slipped from a record high in November as demand for the area’s pricey homes cooled, according to a report issued on Thursday.
December sales of new and resale homes and condominiums in the nine-county region, one of the most expensive markets for U.S. homes, fell 3.8 percent from November and 15.5 percent from a year earlier to 9,347, according to the report by DataQuick Information Systems.
Last month’s year-over-year sales decline was the steepest for the region, which includes the high-technology hub Silicon Valley, since home sales there tumbled 27.2 percent in November 2001, according to DataQuick, a La Jolla, California-based real estate information service.
The December median price paid for a home in the San Francisco area fell 2.6 percent from November’s all-time high of $625,000 to $609,000. The median rose 14.3 percent from $533,000 a year earlier, marking the slowest year-over-year increase since a 13.1 percent rise in March 2004.
Analysts have expected the region’s homes market, and the broader California real estate market, to cool from the torrid pace of recent years fueled by low mortgage interest rates, a boom in interest-only mortgages and a sense among buyers that home prices would continue rising at double-digit rates from previous years.
(Source: Reuters)