Bay Area home sales rose in August, but analysts for one firm that tracks real estate worried that the region’s housing market was still “plagued by uncertainty.”
The nine-county region reported 7,513 sales of single-family homes and condominiums last month, according to San Diego-based DataQuick. That was up 9 percent from July and 12 percent from a year earlier.
DataQuick President John Walsh noted that August 2010 sales had been “pretty lousy” and that lower prices and mortgage interest rates persuaded some buyers last month to come “off the sidelines.”
Even so, he said, “too many others lacked the confidence to step into the game. They worried about their job, or about prices falling more. Others couldn’t get a loan because credit remains drum-tight, or they couldn’t move because they’re underwater.”
The median price paid for all Bay Area homes last month was $370,000, down 1 percent from July and down almost 4 percent from a year earlier.
The median price tumbled to its lowest point in the current real estate cycle at $290,000 in March 2009. The peak was $665,000 in the summer of 2007.
Foreclosure sales last month held steady at 26 percent of the resale market. Such sales peaked at 52 percent in February 2009.
Short sales – transactions where the sale price was less than the amount owed on the mortgage — accounted for nearly 19 percent of resales.