Solano home prices, sales continue to fall

Home prices, sales continue to fall: "




Posted on Thu, Dec. 14, 2006


Home prices, sales continue to fall

By Barbara E. Hernandez
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Bay Area home prices continued their downward spiral while home sales reached a five-year low, a real estate information service reported Thursday.

Nowhere was that drop felt more keenly than in Solano County, where the median sales price dropped 9 percent -- or from $490,000 to $446,000 -- from November 2005 and homes sales fell 27 percent, according to DataQuick Information Systems.

In Contra Costa County sales fell 28.3 percent from last year while values dropped from $589,000 to $562,000, a 4.6 percent drop. In Alameda County sales also fell 28.3 percent and prices dropped from $587,000 to $581,000, a 1 percent dip.

The median price paid for a home in the nine-county Bay Area was $616,000 in November. That was 0.3 percent higher than $614,000 in October but down 1.4 percent from $625,000 in November last year.

Last month's year-over-year decline was the steepest since prices fell 2.1 percent in February 2002. In September this year the median fell 0.8 percent from last year, marking the first annual decline since March 2002, when prices declined 1.3 percent.

Last month's median was 4.3 percent below"