As Home Prices Nosedive, the (Brit to Brit) Advice is “Head East”

I ran into a real-estate friend on the street the other day. She was busy — dashing between her handful of listings, organizing stagers, scheduling buyer tours and open-house dates. But she confided she thought she would have difficulty shifting a couple of her listed homes because, she said, the homeowners were refusing to set realistic prices. The market has changed, but they just don’t see it, she moaned, and then sped off, coffee cup and disclosure packets in hand, acknowledging that at least business was still buzzing.

The picture, as painted by latest price data from Altos Research (for the 11 months to August)  certainly seems to bear her view out (see tables below).

Prices per square foot are way down in both Berkeley and Oakland — $457 for Berkeley and $239 for Oakland at August 31. Median prices overall have taken a dive in Oakland — the median price of a single family home there is now $285,211. As usual, Berkeley, a much smaller, and somewhat schizophrenic market, shows a slightly less definitive trend:  prices picked up in the spring after a dip over the new year and are began to level out again in early July. The median SFH price in the city is $812,607.

  $812,607 is still a significant chunk of money and not dissimilar to San Francisco’s equivalent median price of $848,899 — which won’t be welcome news to “London girl asking” over at Socket Site whose imminent move to San Francisco from London with a $500K budget to spend on a home has prompted an avalanche of advice and guidance in the form of dozens of comments from plugged-in Socket Site readers.

Personally, I think they are all being far too polite. As a fellow Brit, I feel it’s my duty to inform London girl that she’s in for a rude shock as her budget is hardly likely to secure her more than a derelict garret in the city (above left) — and replicating her lifestyle near Hampstead Heath (above right) is pretty much out of the question. “Look East” I say — as did several of those friendly commentators.

Those median prices don’t look like increasing any time soon, and she will certainly get more bangs for her bucks (and better weather) in Berkeley or Oakland than in Fog City.

[Photo credits: sanfranciscohousing.com/.../SF_skyline.jpgand www.londontown.com/DirectImageProcessor/image]