The short answer is…we don’t know.  Lately we have been reading about the major declines in overall house values, so we dug into what’s been happening for the 94611 zip code.  Prices are not dropping here yet.

Let’s began by checking out values right now.  AOL Real Estate reports $939,185 average and $850,500 median house values in December, which still seem pretty high.

The heated market becomes quite clear when you see the three-year trends from Cyberhomes, comparing our zip, city and state.  Prices in 94611 jumped at the beginning of 2008, dropped down quickly and have held steady for the past nine months.  Meanwhile, Oakland and overall California median prices have slowly declined since 2006.

Home sales have bounced around, and Cyberhomes even shows a slight upward price trend since last summer.  Of course, what’s really happening is the number of 94611 properties for sale has dropped considerably between 2008 and 2007.  There are fewer buyers and sellers out there, period.

Because the housing numbers still remain high, we wanted to look beyond medians.  During 2007, City Data shows that 69% of our homes were worth more than $1 million, 17% between $750k-$999k, and 7% from $500k-$749k.  So perhaps there will be some downshifting among these buckets this year, while the medians hold steady.

At least for now, we’re still watching the real estate market plummet all around the Bay Area.  Just like when we looked into local foreclosures, things are sort of steady around here – as long as folks meet those mortgage payments.