The Bay Area housing market turned noticeably sluggish during April, according to a new report released Thursday that sketched a picture of flat prices and tumbling sales.
The median price in the Bay Area of a previously owned home remained unchanged in April at $900,000, compared with the same month in 2018, a report from real estate data firm CoreLogic.
Sales of existing homes, though, sagged in the nine-county region, falling 7% in April compared to April of last year.
"It's still location, location, location," said Margaret Garber-Teeter, a real estate agent with the Walnut Creek office of Compass, a residential brokerage.
Garber-Teeter added, however, that sales prices and the condition of the homes on the market are also crucial factors.
"Houses that are in really good, interesting condition, and priced within the stats are going out the door with multiple offers," Garber-Teeter said. "People selling a house at the highest price, or overpriced, flat line out and they don't get those multiple offers."
The weakness in prices for previously owned residences surfaced in six of the nine Bay Area counties during April, compared with April 2018, according to the CoreLogic report.
"There is definitely a rise in inventory and homes are sitting on the market longer," said Roxy Laufer, a South Bay residential agent with Sereno Group, a realty firm. "There is less urgency for buyers right now. Buyers have more choices."
Median prices for re-sold homes fell in Santa Clara County, Alameda County, Contra Costa County, Marin County, San Francisco, and Sonoma County. Median prices rose only in San Mateo County, Napa County, and Solano County.
"This isn't really surprising," said Kevin Swartz, a real estate agent with Sereno Group. "This is what I'm seeing on the local level, which is Sunnyvale and the surrounding cities. Last year, prices went up so high and the buyers took a step back because it just wasn't affordable."
Plenty of buyers attended open houses in the final few months of 2018, but the tire kicking wasn't followed up by purchase bids, Swartz observed.
"There was a price correction," Swartz said. "It is not a competitive market right now, so buyers are wondering if prices will continue to go down."
Double-digit declines in sales occurred in Santa Clara County, Sonoma County, and Contra Costa County in April compared with the year before.
The most severe home price decline surfaced in Santa Clara County, where median prices lurched 7.7% lower, CoreLogic's report revealed.
One East Bay home seeker, Deepa Chordiya, began looking in February for a three- or a four-bedroom home in her city of residence, Union City, hoping to stay within her budget of $700,000. At the outset of the search, she noted that not much inventory on the market and homes seemed priced at discounts from what she would have expected.
Chordiya spotted a three-bedroom townhome in Union City listed for $750,000, but that was well above her budget, according to her Fremont-based realty agent, Sunil Sethi. Within weeks though, the sellers dropped the price to $699,000, which wound up being the purchase price for Chordiya, who moved in with her two children.
"I was lucky," Chordiya, 42, said.
(Louis Hansen, Bay Area News Group reporter, contributed to this story.)
