- California’s median single-family home sales price was $584,460 in April, about $10,000 short of its all-time high.
- The nine-county Bay Area’s home price exceeded $1 million and was up by 14.1 percent year over year.
- San Mateo was California’s most expensive real estate market in April, with a median sales price of $1.77 million.
Golden State home prices could eclipse their previous peaks within the next few months, while the nine-county Bay Area continued to record double-digit percent appreciation in April, pushing prices just above $1 million.
That’s according to the latest home sales and price report from the California Association of Realtors, which puts the median sales price for a single-family home in the state at $584,460 in April, up by 8.6 percent year over year. California home prices are now only about $10,000 shy of the record high observed in May 2007, and CAR Senior Vice President and Chief Economist Leslie Appleton-Young expects that they will surpass that peak within the next few months.
“With a continued imbalance of supply and demand, we’ll likely break previous price records — which many areas have already done — before the summer is over,” she said.
The Bay Area’s median sales price ended April at $1,010,000, marking the first time that it reached the million-dollar mark since CAR began tracking data in 1990, according to the organization’s historical statistics. Home prices in the nine-county region rose by 14.1 percent from April 2017, the 10th consecutive month of double-digit percent annual gains.
Six of nine Bay Area counties saw home prices grow by more than 10 percent year over year: Santa Clara (22.8 percent), San Mateo (18.0 percent), San Francisco (17.6 percent), Sonoma (12.7 percent), Solano (11.9 percent), and Alameda (10.8 percent). Home prices posted single-digit percent increases in Contra Costa and Marin counties and declined very slightly in Napa County.
Four Bay Area counties remain the state’s only million-dollar-plus housing markets, led by San Mateo, where the median sales price was $1,770,000 in April. San Francisco was California’s second priciest housing market, at $1,650,000 followed by Santa Clara ($1,425,000), Marin ($1,385,000), and Alameda ($969,300) counties.
In typical fashion, declining inventory helped fuel California and Bay Area home price growth in April. Statewide, the monthly supply of inventory was 3.2, a slight decline from one year earlier and still heavily tilted in favor of sellers. The nine-county Bay Area had a 2.1-month supply of homes for sale, up from March but down from April 2017.
Seven of nine Bay Area counties saw inventory decrease from one year earlier, with San Francisco and Solano posting very modest supply gains. With 1.6 months’ of inventory, Santa Clara County has the state’s most severe housing shortage, followed by Alameda (1.7), San Francisco (1.9), and San Mateo (1.9) counties.