Bay Area home sales jump, prices slump

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Bay Area home sales soared last month above the record-low levels of a year ago, marking the largest gain in over six years.

The median sale price, however, did the opposite, diving to $400,000 -- 40 percent below its summer 2007 peak -- as more sales shifted to lower-cost inland markets burdened with foreclosures.

San Diego-based real estate information service MDA DataQuick on Tuesday reported that a total of 7,271 new and resale houses and condos closed escrow in the nine-county Bay Area in September. That was up 0.5 percent from 7,232 in August and up 45 percent from 5,014 in September 2007.

Last month’s 45 percent year-over-year sales gain was the highest for any month since April 2002, when sales shot up 49 percent.

However, last month’s jump is partly the result of the exceptionally weak activity in September 2007, a record low for that month in DataQuick’s statistics back to 1988. Year-ago sales plunged after a credit crunch that struck in August 2007 made jumbo mortgages more expensive and harder to obtain. Entry-level sales were already hurting from the subprime mortgage industry meltdown earlier in 2007.

Last month the median price paid for all new and resale houses and condos sold in the Bay Area was $400,000, down 10.5 percent from $447,000 in August and down a record 36 percent from $625,000 in September 2007, according to MDA DataQuick.

September’s median stood at its lowest point since it was $400,000 in March 2003, and was nearly 39.9 percent below the peak median of $665,000 reached in June, July and August of 2007.

Nearly 42 percent of all existing homes sold across the Bay Area last month had been foreclosed on at some point in the prior 12 months, up from 36.1 percent in August and 6.9 percent a year ago.

At the county level, foreclosure resales ranged from 9.5 percent of resales in San Francisco to 67.9 percent in Solano County. In the Bay Area’s other seven counties, September foreclosure resales were as follows: Alameda, 37.9 percent; Contra Costa, 58.7 percent; Marin, 14.9 percent; Napa, 48.9 percent; Santa Clara, 30.5 percent; San Mateo, 23.8 percent; Sonoma, 48.7 percent.

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