Business & Tech

Bay Area Home Sales Hit Five-Year High

Prices, however, remain low.

Bay Area home sales reached a five-year high in January even as the median home price continued to fall, according to a real estate information service.

A total of 5,479 homes sold in the nine-county Bay Area in January, a number that was up 10.3 percent from January 2011, according to DataQuick.

It was down 26 percent from December, but Dataquick officials said a decline is normal from December to January.

Interested in local real estate?Subscribe to Patch's new newsletter to be the first to know about open houses, new listings and more.

The median home price in January was $326,000, down 2.8 percent from December and 3.6 percent from December 2010.

Median home prices are at their lowest point since April 2009, when they reached $304,000. They hit their lowest point in the recent downturn in March 2009, at $290,000.

Interested in local real estate?Subscribe to Patch's new newsletter to be the first to know about open houses, new listings and more.

DataQuick officials said the median home price in part reflected declining property values along with a large proportion of sales made up by distressed and low-cost properties. Distressed property sales made up 51 percent of the market in the Bay Area in January.

-- Bay City News

For more news about the city and county of San Mateo, follow us on Twitter and "like" us on Facebook. Get Patched in by signing up for our daily newsletter here.

Know a lot about San Mateo? Love to write? Blog for us!


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here