The Golden Gate Bridge is seen in the view from a 15,000-square-foot custom built home on Belvedere Island in Marin County, California, U.S., in Dec. 2012. The builder couldn’t find a buyer for the brand-new waterfront mansion he listed in January for $45 million. He hoped one will turn up at an auction, where the starting bid was $25 million. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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Home prices across the country show signs of stabilizing — except in the Bay Area where we continued to see big price spikes. Why do we always have to play the role of outlier?

Signs of stabilization depend on increases in median home price, numbers of new listings and the average number of days for-sale homes stay on the market.

In the Bay Area, our inventory of new listings increased by only 3 percent to 8,006 homes in July 2013 compared with the same month last year, while our median home price soared by 40 percent to $610,000 in July, up from $436,000 the prior year, according to Emeryville-based ZipRealty.

At the same time, nationally, inventory levels grew by an average of 12 percent and median home prices beefed up by 15.8 percent — a lot more moderate than our 40 percent hike.

Van Davis, ZipRealty’s president of brokerage operations, called the growth in the U.S. real estate market, “one of moderation with underlying strength.”

“The increase in listings coupled with moderating price growth and sales volumes provide significant evidence that the real estate market is beginning to become more balanced,” Davis said.

More inventory on the market keeps prices from ballooning, but clearly that isn’t happening in the Bay Area.

In fact, our total inventory of available homes dropped by 21 percent to 8,275 in July 2013, compared with 10,466 in July 2012.

Places where new listings are climbing at impressive rates include Denver with 34 percent growth, Portland, Ore. with 24 percent, Orange County with 22 percent and Seattle and San Diego both with 21 percent.

“Several metros on the West Coast, which have had the greatest supply imbalances, are now seeing the biggest increases in listings,” Davis said. Did you notice San Francisco is a glaring omission on that list?

Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2013/08/housing-market-stabilizing-everywhere.html