Want more detailed market research? Use the above form to subscribe and we'll send you reports like these ...

Each data point in this scatter chart represents a sale. The dark horizontal line is at the 100% mark - homes which sell at the asking price.

Any data point over the dark line represents an overbid - the home sold for more than the asking price. The gray box shows that we still have a robust market - most of the homes which sell within 3 weeks sold for above the list price.

What about homes which linger on the market? Once a house has been on the market for over 30 days, when it does sell, it usually sells for less than the asking price.

Does this mean that the buyer got a bargain? Possibly. They likely purchased the home at market value, but since they didn't have to compete with other buyers, they had a stronger position when negotiating price and terms.

Now to tell the rest of the story - how have prices changed over the years? The following graph shows that the median home price has dropped since 2007.

I use the median price to compare one year to the next. The median price is simply the price at which half the homes sold for more, and half sold for less.

The average price is skewed upwards because the most expensive 5-10% of the homes for each bedroom count sell for significanly higher prices than the rest of the homes with the same number of bedrooms.

This graph shows that the median price of Berkeley single family homes stabilized in 2009-2010, and has decreased in the first half of 2011 compared to the value in 2010.

Will be interesting to see what 3rd Quarter 2011 brings.

This graph shows how the home prices were distributed for each bedroom count.

I sort the sales prices for 2, 3, and 4 bedroom homes, then use a simple line chart to show how the prices increase from the lowest sales price to the highest sales price. This shows why I prefer to use the median price rather than the average price - the homes which sold in the top 5-10% of each bedroom count sell for significantly more than the others.

Several things to note:

1: The number of sales for the 1st & 2nd quarter of 2011 is significantly more than 50% of the number of sales for 2009. Keep in mind that sales are not uniformly distributed throughout the year ... August and December are two of our slowest months. When I have time, I'll compare 2009 1st & 2nd Quarter to 2011's.

2: Median price for 2, 3 & 4 bedroom homes are lower than they were in 2009.

This comparison is a bit of "apples and oranges" ... I'm comparing 6 months of data in 2011 with an entire year of data for 2009 ... but I think this shows that while Berkeley is not immune from what's happening in the United States real estate market, the effect on home prices is tempered at 3-4% decrease in the median price over the past two year.

This data spans 2007 to 2011 Mid Year, so doesn't including sales price.

Sales price definitely increase as the homes get larger ... but 4 bedroom homes aren't that much larger than 3 bedroom homes. What else could be making the difference?

Aha ... it's Location Location Location! The 4 bedroom homes are concentrated in Elmwood, Claremont, and the lower Berkeley Hills!

Carol told my cousing Mimi that there's nothing I love more than being in a new city in another country with my photographer's vest filled with maps and guidebook.

I'm particularly interested in Art Deco Architecture, so whereve we travel, I create databases with the addresses of interesting places, and then map them. Here's a map I created for Washington DC, Baltimore & Philadelphia; another for Los Angeles.

I knew I could use the same technology to give a sense of what the Berkeley Real Estate Market is like. These maps are created using data from 2007 through Jun 2011. Once again, it comes from the East Bay Regional/Berkeley MLS and doesn't include all home sales. I also didn't filter it for duplication (many homes have been sold more than once in that time frame) ... but since it represents over 2,000 sales, I thought it gave a good representative sampling.

Note that this series spans 2007 through Jun 2011, so I didn't create a price map.

Map of bedroom distribution by neighborhood

Homes with 4 or more bedrooms are in Elmwood/Claremont, upper Claremont, or the Berkeley Hills.

Most of the homes sold in Berkeley are 2 or 3 bedrooms - that makes up most of Central and West Berkeley.

How large are the homes?

The largest square footage homes are also in Elmwood/Claremont, upper Claremont, or the Berkeley Hills. Not rocket science - larger homes have more bedrooms!

About 1/4 of the homes in Central and West Berkeley are less than 1,000 sq ft (that's small for a 2 bedroom home).

1,500 to 1,750 square foot homes are concentrated in the lower Berkeley Hills.

How large are the lots?

The median lot size is about 5,000 sq ft. The larger lots are (drum roll) in Claremont, Upper Claremont, and the Berkeley Hills

When were the homes built?

The Oakland/Berkeley Hills Firestorm was October 1991. We were here and saw it. I hope to never see that again.

The firestorm is why there's a grouping of blue circles on the bottom right ... all these homes were built after 1990.

Elmwood and South Berkeley has the highest concentration of homes built before 1910.

Our Thousand Oaks neighborhood is almost a sea of green circle surrounding Great Stone Face Park at the top of the map. Whenever we show homes in the neighborhood and the buyers ask "when was this home built" I usually say "In the 20's". This really makes it apparent.

The Berkeley Hills above Spruce was primarily built up in the 1930's- 1980's. What was also interesting was how many homes in North Berkeley and Northbrae were built around that time.