The Mercury News story omits San Francisco data and only covers Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa and San Mateo counties. The Chronicle story covers all nine Bay area counties.
My comments here relate to the Chronicle story. First, the Chronicle's own graphic shows median prices are up month over month (June compared to May) in seven of the nine counties. On a year over year comparison five of the nine counties show an increase in medial sales prices and two counties show no change. How does this support the idea that "prices mostly fell too"? It obviously doesn't.
It's true that if you average the median sales price of all nine counties there is a slight decline on a month over month basis but that attributable entirely to one county (San Mateo). And the idea of averaging selling prices over such a wide geographic area is not very useful if you're trying to get a sense of the market.
Or look at it this way: in June 6124 homes were sold in counties where the median sales price was up from the previous month. Only 1233 were sold in the two counties that showed a decline in median sales price. Again, how does that support the idea that "prices mostly fell"?
Specifically for San Francisco, it's true that the number of sales in June declined compared to May -- but that's been true seven out of the last thirteen years. If you look at the month-by-month sales profile in San Francisco, June is the beginning of the summer doldrums that lasts until Labor day. This is a repeating pattern that has been true through boom and bust economies.
The following graphic shows total sales for the first and second half of each year. The first half of 2019 is well within the normal range of sales.
Hysterical headlines notwithstanding, for the five categories of condos and single family homes that we track on a monthly basis the average sales price for four out of five of those categories are at all all time highs.
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