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Bay Area June Home Sales Down 5% From 2010

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Home sales in the San Francisco Bay area got a minor boost in June, but activity was still slower than it was a year earlier, a tracking firm reported Thursday.

A total of 7,998 homes were sold in the nine-county area last month, up 14.5 percent from 6,988 in May, San Diego-based DataQuick said.

"June likely benefited from a combination of factors, such as price reductions, low mortgage rates and perhaps a batch of short sale transactions from spring that took months to close," DataQuick president John Walsh said.

But Walsh cautioned that "last month was not a particularly strong June, historically speaking, and one month's increase in sales from the prior month doesn't constitute a trend."

Indeed, last month's sales were 4.5 percent lower than the 8,373 posted in June 2010.

DataQuick also said the median price for a home in the region was down 7.9 percent to $377,750 from $410,000 in June 2010, but up 1.5 percent from $372,000 in May.

Nearly half of the existing homes sold came from distressed property sales, maintaining the downward pressure on prices.

Foreclosures accounted for 26.2 percent of last month's sales, down slightly from 26.5 percent in May but up from 25.6 percent a year earlier.

Short-sale transactions, in which lenders allow distressed homes to be sold for less than what is owed, accounted for 18.3 percent of existing home sales. That was up a pinch from 18.2 percent in May but down from 18.9 percent a year earlier.

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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