Gingerbread-trimmed houses. Narrow streets lined with original architecture. A quaint atmosphere where no two structures are alike. It's refreshing for those of us accustomed to the monotony of mass-produced homes in suburbia. Perhaps that's what's bringing people in hordes to Pacific Heights, now recognized as San Francisco's pricest division. But this neighborhood is by no means an anomaly in San Francisco or in California. The state is leading our country in terms of home-sale prices.

This a marked change from the last recession, when home values dropped as much as 50 percent in Los Angeles, San Diego, and other California cities now enjoying a rebound in prices and demand. According to research firm Experian, who analyzed the nation's metropolitan areas and then ranked them according to their respective home-value gains, all five of the nation's top five value-gaining metropolitan regions are in California. Behind San Francisco, where resale prices have increased 20 percent in 12 months, are San Jose, Orange County, San Diego, and Oakland, where prices increased anywhere from 12 percent to 18 percent in the past year. Los Angeles, a city particularly hard hit by the last slump, fared well with a 7 percent increase in resale values.

Part of this trend is due to California's Silicon Valley, which is showing no signs of slowing down. People are relocating to this region from all parts of the country and the world, and because high-tech firms generally reward their employees handsomely, relocating families are seeking upper-end properties -- for example, in Pacific Heights, where the sky's the limit. Bidding wars talk even the most hard-line buyers into spending more than they originally anticipated.

According to the California Association of Realtors, home sales in California increased 15 percent, and the median price increased 10 percent in April, the most recent month for which statistics are available.

Some agents speculate that mortgages could skyrocket, much like what happened during the late 1980s, if this mad buying rush in California continues. While that might give some prospective buyers pause for thought, it's not enough to slow down the hordes of buyers doing whatever it takes to win the bidding wars. In San Francisco, the buying atmosphere could be described as panic because the city simply doesn't have any more room to build. No more open land exists for new developments, so bidders are fighting it out for older properties. During a recent auction of an extremely rare remaining 1.1-acre vacant lot in Pacific Heights, an enterprising development company with visions of multifamily units emerged victorious for a whopping $13.5 million.

Because the average homebuyer can't compete with such figures, many prospective buyers are resigning themselves to a move further from city limits than they would have originally preferred. In fact, in Vista, 45 miles north of San Diego, hungry home-hunters camped out for a week in order to snag subdivision lots, which were being sold on a first-come, first-served basis.

Here's a look at how some of the country's other metropolitan regions fared in the Experian study:

Increases in existing home prices from 1997 to 1998:

United States (average): 9.1%

Published: July 7, 1998

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