Don't celebrate an end to the housing slump just yet, but the leading-edge San Francisco Bay Area is looking pretty good this spring.

That could bode well for the nation's housing market.

The San Francisco market is one of the Golden State's strongest real estate sectors and, as goes California, the saying goes, so goes the nation.

According to La Jolla, CA-based DataQuick's DQNews service, the San Francisco Bay Area's 2008 March-to-April jump in home sales was the strongest March-to-April period in DataQuick's history which dates back to 1988.

Why the increase in sales? Lower home prices in one of the nation's most expensive housing markets.

The median price paid for a home in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area was down nearly 3.5 percent during the one-month March-to-April period. April's median price was also down a 21 percent from April last year and 22 percent from the region's peak prices last summer.

The annual drop in home prices ranged from 5 percent in San Francisco to more than 25 percent in the less populous Solano County. In Silicon Valley, a bellwether area for the region, home prices dipped more than 13 percent.

Reduced down payment requirements and a recent drop in the interest rates for larger, so-called "jumbo conforming" loans is also a factor in improved sales in the expensive housing market.

In May, loan rates, for the new jumbo conforming loan level of up to $729,750 dropped a full percentage point, thanks to loan purchase changes at Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac.

The adjustment means a $500,000 mortgage with a 30-year fixed rate available at 7 percent in April, is now available for qualified borrowers for 6 percent.

That's a $330 savings on the monthly mortgage payment and a real window of opportunity for many buyers.

Published: May 26, 2008

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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.