Menlo Park: Summer Prices Chill Out

According to Altos Research (week of 8-17-2007), the Menlo Park housing market is still in the “Warm Seller’s” zone, though it’s not quite as strong as Palo Alto. In fact, there’s a bit of a chill in the air; between June 1 and August 17, the median home price actually went from $1,133,900 to $919,444, dropping by $214,456.

In Menlo Park, you can’t apply these median figures evenly over all the market quartiles. It’s best to consider the market in two pieces – the Redwood City side (mostly quartiles 3 & 4) and the Palo Alto/Atherton side (mostly quartiles 1 & 2).

The thing to note is that Quartile 4 (the units under about $600,000) is beginning to crash, with the Days on Market reaching an average of 138 days. This is about three times higher than the middle of the market. My guess that this is due to the tightening up of credit in the subprime markets.