Silicon valley suffers ‘sales shock’

It seems that even the richest areas of the USA are not immune to the real estate crisis…

According to DataQuick Information Systems. the Silicon Valley housing market suffered in March, as median prices fell sharply and sales hit record lows for the month. The median price of the previously owned houses that changed hands in Santa Clara County last month was $684,500, down 9.3 percent from March 2007. For resale condos, the median price fell by 1.3 percent to $513,000.

For the nine-county Bay Area, the median price of houses sold last month plummeted 20.4 percent, the steepest decline in DataQuick's records, which go back to 1988. The counties with the worst depreciation were Contra Costa and Solano.

DataQuick analyst John Karevol, commented: "It's very clear right now that a great deal of home buying is on hold. Last month was the slowest March on record in Santa Clara County, with only 1,105 homes of all types changing hands.

"The big issue everybody's watching right now is whether or not there is a recession. If you're looking at a recession, the distress is going to start to migrate into other categories" in addition to the primarily lower-priced neighborhoods now being affected”.