Bay Area median home price, sales slide in May

The median price of a home in the San Francisco Bay area tumbled 21.7 percent in May to the lowest level in nearly four years, a real estate research firm said Wednesday.

The annual decline drove the median price to $517,000 in the nine-county region, according to DataQuick Information Systems.

The median price was $660,000 in May 2007 and $510,000 in September 2004.

Last month’s drop was fueled by a surge in sales of heavily discounted foreclosed homes, a trend that appears to be building across many inland areas of the state.

Earlier this week, DataQuick reported the median home price in May plunged 26.7 percent to $370,000 in a six-county region of Southern California.

Despite increased sales of foreclosed homes, overall home sales in the San Francisco Bay area notched their slowest pace for any May in DataQuick records, which go back to 1988.

Some 6,216 new and resale homes were sold last month, down 23.1 percent from May 2007, when 8,080 homes were sold, the firm said.

Sales declined 1.5 percent last month from 6,310 in April. The median price remained flat during the same period.

Some 25.6 percent of the homes resold last month had been foreclosed on sometime in the previous 12 months, up from only 3.3 percent in May last year, the firm said.

In Solano County, where the median home price sank 31 percent to $300,000 compared with the year-ago period, more than half of all resold homes were foreclosed properties.

In Contra Costa County, which saw its median home price tumble by nearly 34 percent to $390,500 compared with last year, foreclosed homes accounted for 43.3 percent of all homes resold.

In contrast, foreclosures made up only 5.8 percent of resold homes in San Francisco County, where the median price slipped 5.4 percent to $790,000 since May 2007.

Six Southern California counties experienced a similar trend. Nearly 38 percent of all the homes sold in the region last month were in foreclosure at some point during the past 12 months.