Bay Area housing market improves in March

Bay Area home sales notched their best March in five years as prices appeared to level off, new data show.

Sales rose 9.1% from March 2011, totaling 7,694 across the nine-county region. As is typical with the end of the slower winter season and the start of busy spring, sales surged 34.9% from February to March, real estate research firm DataQuick of San Diego reported.

“While the changes we’re seeing are incremental, they’re incremental in a positive direction,” DataQuick President John Walsh said.

The region’s median price was essentially flat, down 0.6% from the same month a year earlier, to hit $358,000. That was up 10.2% from February.

The median price improved year-over-year in Napa, Contra Costa, Santa Clara and Sonoma counties. The median price in San Francisco County was unchanged from a year prior.

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