IRVINE, CA -- More double-digit home price jumps lie ahead for the technology economy-driven San Francisco Bay Area housing market, according to a second quarter forecast for new home price appreciation in 2000.

San Francisco Bay Area's new home prices are the nation's hottest and expected to jump highest this year, increasing nearly 16 percent to a median $422,500, according to the second quarter Market Snapshot, an analysis of new home prices in 75 metropolitan areas conducted by The Meyers Group, a new home information and consulting service.

The Bay Area includes San Francisco, San Jose, Palo Alto, Los Gatos, Saratoga, Marin and other cities in a nine-county, Super Nova-hot housing region -- the most expensive metropolitan expanse in the nation.

California communities took the top five spots on Meyers' list of new home price forecasts. Following the Bay Area's expected 15.7 percent jump in median prices of new homes, San Diego, at No. 2, is expected to see new home prices rise 12.3 percent to a median of $260,000; No. 3, Los Angeles-Long Beach, 8.1 percent to $222,000; No. 4, Orange County, 8 percent to $304,000; and No. 5 Riverside-San Bernardino, 7.5 percent to $138,400.

Houston-Galveston-Brazoria, TX; Northern & Central New Jersey; Fort Myers-Cape Coral, FL; Denver-Boulder-Greeley, CO, and Myrtle Beach, SC rounded out the top ten list of cities with new home prices expected to jump by 6 percent or more.

The Meyers' quarterly Market Snapshot includes analyses of local market conditions in the nation's largest 75 metropolitan areas. Each analysis includes home price history and projections and data on affordability, employment, building permits, housing demand and supply conditions and other economic indicators.

Silicon is gold in the San Francisco Bay Area, where new technology is responsible for an expected 2.8 percent unemployment rate and 70,000 new jobs this year.

Well-compensated workers, often willing to pay more than the asking price for new and resale homes, and more trade-up buyers than first-timers scrambling among picked-over inventories, have already driven up median prices on existing homes by 25 percent in the past year.

The Bay Area not only enjoys a highly-skilled labor force, but also the West Coast's financial center, expanding Pacific Rim and international technology trade and a growing biotechnology industry, according to Meyers' Bay Area Market Snapshot.

In San Diego, where unemployment is expected to drop to 2.6 percent, job growth should top 28,600 this year, thanks to expansions in a diverse economy with tourism, high tech, biotech, defense and export industry segments. More affordable than the Bay Area, San Diego's existing home prices jumped only 16 percent in the past year to a median of $251,400, according to that city's Market Snapshot.

At the bottom of the heap, the No. 74 Cleveland and No. 75 St. Louis areas, victims of the Old Economy, are the only markets among 75 metropolitan areas expected to see declines in new home prices.

Cleveland has been unable to replace consolidations in its health care, banking and steel industries. Meyers forecasts new home prices to decline 0.6 percent to $124,300 this year in Cleveland.

It's worse in St. Louis where Boeing's layoffs, Monsanto's merger with Phaarmacia & Upjohn and TWA's financial problems is costing the city thousands of jobs. New home prices will tumble 2.8 percent to a median $100,000 in St. Louis, Meyers says.

Three-page Market Snapshots of all 75 cities analyzed are available on the Meyers Group Web site's housing analysis page.

Published: July 19, 2000

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.