Bay Area Home Prices Stagnant After Seven-Year Tech Bonanza
The Bay Area’s housing market is cooling off after years of growth fueled by the tech boom.
(Bloomberg) -- The Bay Area’s housing market is cooling off after years of growth fueled by the tech boom.
The median price of a house in San Francisco increased just 1.3% from a year earlier to $1.6 million, the smallest gain since 2012, according to the real estate brokerage Compass. Prices in Santa Clara County, which includes San Jose and Palo Alto, declined almost 6% to $1.26 million.
The housing market in the Bay Area has exploded in recent years, with the tech industry driving a wealth boom that pushed up prices, particularly in San Francisco. A flurry of IPOs in 2019 was expected to continue the momentum, creating a bevy of newly minted millionaires. But the disappointing debuts of Lyft, Uber and Slack, combined with an abandoned public listing by WeWork, has helped dampen the market.
There’s at least one part of the Bay Area where prices are jumping: homes in the Oakland-Berkeley region gained 4% in 2019 to $860,000. Those cities continue to be a refuge for buyers priced out of San Francisco, according to Compass.
To contact the reporter on this story: Nic Querolo in New York at jquerolo1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Craig Giammona at cgiammona@bloomberg.net, Christine Maurus
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