San Francisco Area Home Sales Rise as Share of Distressed Deals Increases
San Francisco Bay Area home sales increased last month, driven by demand for distressed and foreclosed properties, DataQuick said.
A total of 7,494 new and resale houses and condominiums sold in the nine-county region last month, an increase of almost 19 percent from the previous month and 4.4 percent from December 2010, according to the San Diego-based data provider. The increase from a year earlier was the sixth in a row.
Sales of foreclosed and other troubled properties, which typically are discounted, made up almost 50 percent of transactions, up from 46 percent in November and 48 percent a year earlier, DataQuick said.
“Many of the deals that did make their way through the system were in the distressed arena,” DataQuick President John Walsh said in the statement. “Much of it was deeply discounted cash purchases, disproportionately at the lower end of the price scale.”
The median Bay Area home price fell to $351,500 last month, down 3.5 percent from November and 6.3 percent from a year earlier, according to DataQuick. Sales for $500,000 or more accounted for 31.4 percent of purchases, down from a revised 32 percent in November and 35 percent in December 2010, the data provider said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Nadja Brandt in Los Angeles at nbrandt@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Taub at dtaub@bloomberg.net
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