There's been a lot of chatter on the blogs today about yesterday's Chronicle article on Bay Area home prices (as well as in the comments on SFGate). The article claims that while home prices around the Bay are declining, Noe Valley is still rising:
One of the few standouts was the 94114 ZIP in San Francisco, home of Noe Valley, where houses go for well over a million dollars, designer strollers clog the sidewalks, posh shops peddle handmade ethnic tchotchkes, and the Google bus regularly cruises the streets.
But even that ZIP didn't enjoy the double-digit appreciation that became de rigueur during the real estate boom. Instead Noe Valley prices were up 6.8 percent year over year, from $893 a square foot to $954.
Socketsite (rightly) turned this into an argument about what constitutes appreciation. But the commenters on Curbed SF get to what we think is the major flaw of the argument about whether Noe is hot or not: 94114 does not make up Noe Valley and only Noe Valley. We'd like to see better analysis using real estate districs - Noe Valley is District 5C and includes 94114, 94131 and even a little bit of 94110. Because without that data, this article tells us nothing about where we live.
Lacking that information, let's take a snapshot of the current market. As we've done in the past, here's what's happened to pricing of existing listings in the last week. Please note that the original price is just that - prices may have changed many times since originally listed (up and down).
| Address | Original | Now | Difference |
| 76 Homestead | $2,150,000 | $1,950,000 | -$200,000 |
| 931 Elizabeth | $2,595,000 | $1,939,000 | -$656,000 |
| 619 28th St | $899,000 | $829,000 | -$70,000 |
| 4338 Cesar Chavez | $2,195,000 | $1,995,000 | -$200,000 |
| 579 28th St | $1,049,000 | $979,000 | -$70,000 |
| 363 Jersey St | $1,350,000 | $1,249,000 | -$101,000 |
Again, these are listing prices - not actual selling prices. But if nothing else, the data suggest that realtors haven't figured out where this market is going. Either the buyers aren't out there, or they're waiting for prices to come down.
Unless, of course, there's more data from the MLS showing actual selling prices on the rise. Can anyone out there add recent selling data to the mix?
[NVSF: Where is Noe Valley?]
[NVSF: Changes in the Noe Valley Housing Market (10/9/08)]
[SFGate: Home prices down in 90% of Bay Area ZIP codes]
[SocketSite: Don’t Confuse Average Prices And Appreciation]
[Curbed SF:
