Bay Area home sales grinding down — could this be the top?
Bay Area home sales grinding down — could this be the top? As Bay Area home prices rise, more residents are unwilling or unable to meet sky-high down payments and mortgages. Home sales in the nine-county region slowed to their lowest point in August in seven years, as median sale prices again climbed double digits — 12 percent — to continue a record streak. Bay Area home sales dropped 10 percent from the previous year, according to a monthly report released Thursday by real estate data firm CoreLogic, but super-hot prices in Santa Clara, San Francisco, Alameda and San Mateo counties pushed the median sale price of existing homes in the region to $860,000. “This summer, we saw more buyers hesitate,” said CoreLogic analyst Andrew LePage. The number of homes sold in the region has fallen year over year for the last three consecutive months, he said. This summer’s activity was the slowest June-through-August period in seven years. LePage attributed the decline to a lack of afford