Real Estate

Local Home Prices among Highest in Bay Area

San Mateo County trails only San Francisco and Marin counties in median home price.

Written by Jim Welte and Jacob Bourne:

San Mateo County saw a $135,000 jump in median home price in just one year, according to numbers released Thursday by DataQuick.

As of June, the median local home value was $705,000, up from $570,000 12 months earlier.

The Bay Area as a whole recorded a median home price of $555,000 in June, up 33 percent from $417,000 in June 2012 and up 7 percent from $519,000 in May. The year-over-year median home price increase for the Bay Area was the fastest pace on record, DataQuick officials said.

DataQuick officials attributed the marked rise in home prices to the disappearance of distress sales, an improving economy and mortgage rates that remain very low. The dip on total home sales across the Bay Area was due to a slow-growing supply of homes for sale continuing to fall short of demand and an easing of purchases by cash and investor buyers eased.

“It’s easier for a market to regain lost ground than to push into new territory,” DataQuick President John Walsh said in a statement. “We’re still bouncing off the bottom. This next part of the cycle should be fairly self-adjusting. As prices go up, more homes will come on the market. Price pressures will ease. The only element we don’t know much about right now is how much pent-up demand there really is out there.”

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The Bay Area's median home price peaked at $665,000 in June and July 2007, then dropped as low as $290,000 in March 2009 – a decline of $375,000, or 56.4 percent, DataQuick reported. In May 2013, the median was still 22 percent below the peak but it had made up about 61 percent of its peak-to-trough loss.


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