18% of Santa Clara County households have income to buy median-priced home

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

Santa Clara County home prices hit record high
By Pete Carey, Mercury News
Posted on Thu, Dec. 15, 2005

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/13415373.htm

Home prices in Santa Clara County jumped to an all-time high in November, hitting a median of $715,000, while a slowing pace of sales suggested the region was returning to a more balanced housing market. The new median price is up just over 19 percent from a year ago, when the county's November median price for a single-family home was $600,000.

But November's sales were 5.8 percent lower than October's and down 12.4 percent from the previous November. Rising interest rates and the start of the holiday season may account for some of that decline. But Marshall Prentice, president of DataQuick, which released the numbers, said there seems to be a return to balance in the overheated Bay Area real estate market. ``Today's Bay Area real estate market has all the characteristics of a relatively normal balanced market,'' he said. ``We knew the year-ago numbers were unsustainably strong. Right now it looks like current trends will last well into 2006, with strong, but not record-breaking sales, and continued appreciation.''

The association's affordability index shows that only 18 percent of households in the Santa Clara County area have an income high enough to buy a median-priced home.