The San Francisco Chronicle published an article on April 15 which has a good summary of the real estate trends during the pandemic.
“The Bay Area deviated from state and national trends. The nine-county region’s urban ZIP codes saw home prices increase on average by just 4.7%, while its suburban ZIP codes’ home values shot up by 9.3%. The sluggish pace of urban home prices is driven almost entirely by San Francisco: After factoring the city out, other urban ZIP codes in the Bay Area grew by 8.5%, nearly on par with the national average.”
“Additionally, across the entire Bay Area, our analysis found that home values in less-expensive ZIP codes increased at greater rates than pricier ones. However, this trend reversed in rural areas: Affordable rural ZIP codes saw home values increase at a lower rate than in wealthier areas.”
The article uses Feb 2020 to Feb 2021 comparison data from Zillow and reports a 3.2% price drop for San Francisco home prices.
We caution everyone not to use a current month to the same month a year ago when trying to understand trends. Changes in interest rates can cause buyers to speed up or slow down their purchases. In this case early uncertainty over the pandemic lead to both buyers and sellers withdrawing from the market in Feb 2020. We do believe that less expensive areas have tended to have greater price growth than more expensive areas recently.
We publish graphs of San Mateo County real estate trends, Santa Clara County real estate trends, and for almost all Silicon Valley cities.