Bay housing prices fall .8 percent

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Bay Area housing prices are finally falling, declining last month for the first time in more than four years.

The median price of a home in the nine Bay Area counties slipped .8 percent to $611,000 in September from a year earlier in the nine-county region, according to the DataQuick real estate information service. That figure includes both single-family houses and condos.

A build up of inventory and an increase in the supply of low-priced condos in the East Bay dragged down prices, said John Karevoll, an analyst at DataQuick. The price of new homes fell 12.3 percent in September, which pulled down the Bay Area median.

"It doesn't mean that they've lost value -- it means that there's a bunch of cheap stuff selling, " Karevoll said. "There's a big chunk of condo conversion units in the East Bay and those are generally cheaper than most other properties."

Single family home prices rose moderately in September, ticking up 1.1 percent to $653,000 in the nine-county region. In the San Francisco, the median home price climbed 5.5 percent to $800,000.

I guess housing in the Bay area can't go up 10% a year from now to doomsday.