Bay Area home values have turned a corner after nine months of steady declines.
In Greater San Francisco, average home values rose nearly $800, or 0.07 percent, since June, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, citing figures from Zillow.
The San Francisco metro region includes the Peninsula, East Bay and North Bay.
As would-be home buyers waded into the busy season from April through June, real estate agents and economists said that the slight uptick in prices isn’t surprising. The market is now adjusting from the slump over the last year that followed a huge boom in home prices during the pandemic.
Some Bay Area counties are swinging back faster than others.
While Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda and Contra Costa counties saw price declines over the past month, Solano, Marin, Sonoma and Napa counties saw an uptick in values.
Also pushing prices higher is a low number of listings in the wider Bay Area, experts said.
A growing number of buyers have come to terms with high interest rates, which have been slowly ticking down over the last two months, leading to busier open houses and quicker sales, pushing prices toward a rebound, Patrick Carlisle, chief market analyst at Compass, told the Chronicle in an email.
Carlisle said that during the first four months of the year, the number of new listings coming on the market was “substantially down, approximately 37 percent, well below historic norms.”
He blamed high interest rates, as owners of homes with very low fixed-rate mortgages are loathe to sell because if they trade up they face a mortgage with much higher rates.
Zillow Senior Economist Jeff Tucker told the Chronicle that pricey markets like the Bay Area tend to be more sensitive to high interest rates, as they can put homes just out of a buyer’s reach
Tucker also said the low inventory is “like the Bay Area’s secret weapon against price declines” and will contribute to the market turnaround.
— Dana Bartholomew
Read more
