Bay Area home sales drop 12%

July home sales in a nine-county swath around San Francisco Bay dropped 12% from the same period last year, but median prices remain stable, a real estate research firm said Wednesday.

In all, 7,423 new and resale homes were sold last month in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Mateo, Solano and Sonoma counties, DataQuick Information Systems said.

The total represents a 12.4% drop from July 2006 and a 6.8% decline from last month.

Sales have decreased on a month-to-month basis in the San Francisco Bay Area for the last 30 months. July sales were the slowest for any July in the region since 6,666 homes were purchased in 1995, the firm said.

“The trend we’re seeing statewide is that more expensive neighborhoods are doing better than less expensive neighborhoods,” said DataQuick President Marshall Prentice. “The Bay Area has always been a high-cost market, and we’re not seeing the declines in prices or sales volume that we’re seeing elsewhere in California.”

The median price for a Bay Area home remained at $665,000 last month.

Marin County saw a 13.9% gain in median price to $887,500 in July. Solano County posted the region’s biggest drop, a 9.8% decline to $415,000.