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아직도 캘리포니아 집값은 떨어질 주 모르고 잡 경기가 좋아서 오르고 있다는 보고입니다.

Big drop in U.S. home prices
A record decline nationwide, though California sees rise

Marni Leff Kottle, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, October 26, 2006

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/10/26/HOMESALES.TMP




National housing prices took a record fall in September as the pace of sales skidded for the sixth consecutive month.

The median price for an existing home nationwide -- including single-family houses, condos and co-ops -- dropped 2.2 percent to $220,000 from $225,000 a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors. It was the biggest drop on an annual basis in monthly housing prices on record.

Meanwhile, the pace of sales last month was off 14.2 percent from a year ago.

In California existing home prices appear to be weathering the downturn slightly better than the rest of the country, a fact that some economists attribute to good economic conditions and a relatively tight housing supply compared with other states.

The median price of an existing single-family home in California climbed 1.8 percent to $553,050 last month from $543,510 in September 2005, according to the California Association of Realtors.

"Home prices are still holding up in California, first of all because the job market is still respectable," said Lawrence Yun, senior economist for the National Association of Realtors. "The technology job market in the Bay Area, in San Francisco and San Jose, is really coming around strongly, and those are high-paying jobs."

Still, some economists said the state's housing market is likely to deteriorate further before it recovers.

"We haven't seen the bottom yet, and we won't see bottom until 2007," said Christopher Thornberg, a principal at the Beacon Economics consulting firm, which has offices in Los Angeles and San Rafael. "We have a big issue on our hands."

The number of existing homes sold in California fell almost 32 percent compared with a year ago, as inventory rose and houses sat on the market longer.

It took a median of 54 days for homes to sell from the time they were listed, compared with 30 days a year earlier, according to the California realty group, which also estimated that it would take seven months to sell all of the homes on the market right now at the current pace, compared with 3.2 months a year ago.

"You've got sellers who are slow to accept the new market realities and buyers that are just kind of waiting for a market that I don't think they're going to see," said Leslie Appleton-Young, chief economist for the California Association of Realtors.

The run-up in home prices over the past four years has also decreased the pool of potential buyers who can afford homes, slowing the pace of sales, according to Yun.

Los Altos had the highest median price of an existing home , $1.55 million. Other Bay Area cities on the top-10 list included Burlingame ($1.33 million), Los Gatos ($1.21 million), Danville ($1.01 million) and Cupertino ($968,750).

In the Bay Area, existing home sales were down 24 percent in September from a year ago, while existing home prices rose 2.2 percent to $725,870 from $737,110, the report found.

An analysis last week from DataQuick, a real estate information firm, found that home prices fell 0.8 percent to $611,000 in all nine Bay Area counties. The DataQuick report looked not only at existing homes but also new construction.