Median home price hits record $722,000 in Silicon Valley

Median home price hits record $722,000 in February, though sales slowed

By Sue McAllister Mercury News

Despite a cooling real estate market in which homes are staying on the market longer and fewer are selling, the median sale price of Santa Clara County houses in February was $722,000,a new high. The median price figure was 14 percent higher than a year earlier.

In another milestone, the median price of condos sold hit the $500,000 mark in the county for the first time. That's up 22 percent from February 2005.

The number of new and existing houses and condos sold in the county, meanwhile, dropped 14 percent compared to a year earlier, with 1,614 homes changing hands. The figures were released Thursday by DataQuick Information Systems, which obtains the data from public records of completed home sales.

Though it may seem counterintuitive that sales volume dropped while prices rose, it's a normal phenomenon for a real estate market coming out of a frenzied period, said John Karevoll of DataQuick.

Sales are ``showing a downturn in volume, but not nearly enough to tug prices down. If we continue to see a 15 percent decline in sales and it goes on for another year, then we'll see some downward pressure on prices. But not with today's numbers.

For the nine-county Bay Area region, the median price of houses sold in February was $637,000, up 12 percent from Feb. 2005, but off from last November's peak of $656,000.

Sales volume dropped also, with 4,023 houses changing hands, down 18 percent from a year earlier.