The slump in the Bay Area housing market continued in December as home prices remained flat and sales slowed to a crawl.
The median price paid for a home in the Bay Area's nine counties rose just 0.5 percent to $612,000 in December from $609,000 a year earlier, according to DataQuick Information Systems.
The number of homes sold in December fell almost 20 percent from a year ago, in line with the size of declines of recent months. The drop extends a streak of monthly sales decreases dating back to April 2005.
"We're still in the middle of the housing-market correction, both in terms of price and volume," said Stephen Levy, director of Palo Alto's Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy. "I still think we're nearer the beginning or the middle of a longer correction."
The resale-housing market fared better than the new-home market, as the median price of an existing home rose 1.9 percent to $645,000 from $633,000 in December. Contra Costa and Alameda counties reported the biggest median price increases with gains of 5 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively, while Marin County posted a drop of 5 percent, the biggest of any county.
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