Home sales in the nine-county Bay Area turned in their best September since 2009, with suburban counties enjoying the strongest gains, according to a recent report by CoreLogic, the real estate information services company.
Contra Costa, Solano and Napa counties showed the biggest year-over-year gains for September. Solano County led all nine counties with a 31.2 percent year increase last month from a year ago. Contra Costa saw sales climb more than 18 percent while Napa County reported more than a 16 percent increase.
Overall, some 7,816 homes sold in the nine-county Bay Area region, up 6.9 percent from last September.
Sales activity could be shifting to lower-cost parts of the Bay Area as buyers get priced out of higher-cost ones, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. To be sure, more than 40 percent of all sales last month occurred just in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.
But Andrew LePage, research analyst with CoreLogic, said it could also be that people in lower-cost areas who were “stuck in their homes” because they owed more than the homes were worth “finally have enough equity to sell. We are unlocking some inventory there (inland counties). In the high-end coastal communities, that played out earlier.”
Meanwhile, the median sale price for a new or existing home or condo in the Bay Area rose to $650,000 last month, up 1.2 percent from August and up 8.3 percent from September 2014. All Bay Area counties except Marin saw a year-over-year jump in the median sale price. Napa County led the way with an 18.8 percent price increase.
— by Coldwell Banker San Francisco Bay Area President Mike James; compliments of Anne Dautun Laury, Luxury Real Estate Broker, Coldwell Banker
