Median home prices in Bay Area and Santa Clara County

Pricing in the Bay Area are definitely on the rise as the latest data is showing, for example see http://www.dqnews.com/Articles/2012/News/California/Bay-Area/RRBay121015.aspx.  Median prices have softened over the past couple of months in Santa Clara County though they are still much better than this time last year, here the chart for the past 5 years:

The more interesting data, though, is to look at average pricing of For Sale homes which is trending up very strongly:

It would be easy to see this upward trend as a leading indicator of house pricing and certainly the pricing has improved in many areas, but there are many factors that could be driving this average up beyond just pricing. Some examples could be that all the cheaper housing is sold quickly, which they are, and higher end homes are on the market longer distorting the numbers. This will need to wait for a later post, but the low inventory levels we are experiencing is also a factor, as the lower end homes are not coming on the market and when they do they sell so quickly as to not show up in this data. That's my take on the trend, FWIW; more soon to see if the data fits the theory.