The headlines are everywhere: Housing prices are coming down. The boom is over. The real estate market is slowing fast. Buyers are abandoning their home searches and staying put.

The reality looks a little different. While higher interest rates have impacted some buyers’ ability to pay record high prices for homes, and some may have indeed left the market, that has not resulted in lower prices.

At least not yet. 

In mid-spring, with interest rates climbing, the median home sale price in the East Bay rose to $1,260,000. That was a 12% increase over last year and a 20% increase over the first quarter of this year. Demand may have softened, but not enough to get sellers to reduce prices.

Sale prices usually come down slightly in the summer market (this is an interesting phenomenon that deserves its own blog post), so the big question is whether or not they will fall more than they normally do in light of current market dynamics.

I suspect they will. We’ll see exactly how much in another month or so when we get sales data for the homes on the market now.

Stay tuned.