This report focuses on the cities of Diablo Valley, but sometimes includes other nearby cities to provide greater context to the market.
Generally speaking, after years of solid appreciation rates, annual 2019 Bay Area median home prices went down a little bit, went up a little bit or basically remained unchanged as compared to 2018.
For 2020, economist Ken Rosen at UC Berkeley has said he expects the Bay Area median price to remain basically flat, within a general range of up or down 2% – in other words, similar to what happened last year. We can’t predict the future, but that certainly doesn’t sound unreasonable, and happily avoids the sensationalism of many other media-grabbing forecasts.
Median sales prices are generalities and not exact measurements of changes in fair market value. They can be affected by a number of factors and are sometimes subject to anomalous fluctuations. This is especially true of very expensive communities with relatively low numbers of sales, and very wide ranges of sales prices: Outsized year-over-year changes should be taken with a grain of salt until substantiated over the longer term.
How median prices apply to any particular home is unknown without a specific comparative market analysis.
Economic Factors Affecting Real Estate Markets
