The Burlingame real estate market, part of the larger Bay Area housing market, saw a decline in the number of units sold despite a fall in the number of foreclosures. According to an October 22, 2010 report from San Francisco Chronicle, “San Francisco Bay Area home sales fell in September to the month's lowest level in three years as high unemployment diminished buyer confidence. Sales in the nine-county region plunged 20 percent from a year earlier to 6,334 houses and condominiums, the smallest number for any September since 2007, data provider MDA DataQuick said Thursday. Transactions decreased 5.4 percent from August. Prices gained the most in Santa Clara County, where the median climbed 11 percent to $500,000. The only counties with price declines were Napa, where the median dropped 6.4 percent to $337,000, and San Francisco, where it fell 4.6 percent to $620,000, DataQuick said.”
Fewer Burlingame homes for sale were the product of foreclosure, according to an October 27, 2010 report also from the San Francisco Chronicle. The piece by Carolyn Said noted that “Fewer homes in California and the Bay Area were in the foreclosure pipeline in the third quarter compared with the same time last year, according to a real estate report released on Tuesday. "There is evidence there's less distress out there, but it's still at abnormally high levels," said Andrew LePage, an analyst with MDA DataQuick, the San Diego real estate information firm that published the report. In the third quarter, the nine-county Bay Area saw 12,690 default notices, which are sent after three months or more of missed payments. That was down 32.5 percent from a year ago, but up slightly from the second quarter. Over the past 15 years, the region's quarterly average for default notices was 6,231, so activity is still twice as high as normal. The results cover the three months that ended in September, so do not reflect fallout from the recent controversy over sloppy bank paperwork in foreclosures. Bank of America, for instance, temporarily halted foreclosures nationwide this month. Statewide, there were 83,261 default notices in the third quarter, down 25.5 percent from a year earlier, but up 18.9 percent from the second quarter. Trustee deeds, the final step of repossessing houses in foreclosure, stood at 6,757 for the Bay Area, down 9.4 percent compared with a year earlier and about the same as the prior quarter.”