November East Bay Economic Data

The East Bay Economic Development Alliance (www.edab.org) just released their November report. I have posted the interesting real estate portions of the report and commentary below or you can view a full PDF of the report here.

Bay Area home sales held steady at a five-year low in October 2006 as buyers and sellers circled each other in a game of wait-and-see. Prices remained flat, according to DataQuick Information Systems.
A total of 7,979 new and resale houses and condos were sold in the nine-county region in October. That was up 0.9 percent from 7,907 for the month before, and down 24.1 percent from 10,508 for October last year.

All nine Bay Area counties saw a decrease in the number of homes sold in October 2006 versus October 2005. The median price paid for a Bay Area home was $614,000 in October, up 0.5 percent from September’s $611,000, and unchanged from October last year. The median hovered around $630,000 last spring and early summer, and spiked to $644,000 in June before slowing down.

The typical monthly mortgage payment that Bay Area buyers committed themselves to paying was $2,901 last month. That was down from $2,924 in September, and up from $2,876 for October a year ago. It peaked in June at $3,183. Adjusted for inflation, mortgage payments are 14 percent higher than they were at the peak of the prior cycle fourteen years ago.