California Still Most Costly for Home Buyers

More people want houses than there are houses to go around in several cities in the Northeast, leading to big price increases in the last year, but California is still the most expensive place to buy them, it was reported Friday.

Seven of the 11 cities in the United States with 10% or higher price jumps are in the Northeast, but California’s big cities and their suburbs still have the highest median price, with half of the homes in the San Francisco area costing $144,100 or more.

San Francisco replaced the Anaheim-Santa Ana metropolitan area at the top of the list. The median resale price has risen almost $10,000 in the last three months in San Francisco, according to the report by the National Assn. of Realtors.

California’s Anaheim-Santa Ana and San Jose metropolitan areas are also in the top five most expensive.

The largest year-to-year increase was a 36.1% jump--to $138,800 from $102,000--in the Boston metropolitan area.

The New York metropolitan area experienced a 29.3% increase--to $138,200 from $106,900--in the median price.

Half of all resale homes went for more than the median figure, half for less.

Other cities in the Northeast with double-digit increases in the last 12 months were Albany, N.Y.; Hartford, Conn.; Philadelphia; Providence, R.I., and Syracuse, N.Y.

The other four with increases of 10% or more were the Baltimore, Atlanta, San Jose and Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan areas.

The lowest median prices for previously owned homes were available in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls, N.Y., area, where half of all homes sold for less than $46,300.

The average increase for the 44 major metropolitan areas in the realtors’ survey was 4.5% to a current median of $76,500.

Seven metropolitan areas registered declines in home prices over the last year.

They were Birmingham, Ala; Milwaukee; Orlando, Fla.; Phoenix; San Antonio; Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Fla., and Tulsa, Okla.

Milwaukee had the largest drop--4.2% from $69,600 a year ago to $66,700 in the third quarter.

Meanwhile, the realtors said, with incomes increasing--on average--faster than the cost of living, Americans are buying homes at a 24.9% higher rate than a year ago.