Your Life in a Bubble / If housing prices drop 15 percent, what would it mean to you?

Carol Lloyd crunches the numbers. Should you buy? Should you sell? What does it mean to you?

According to DataQuick, San Francisco County stats are as follows:

Homes sold Jun-03: 617
Homes sold Jun-04: 847
Pct. change: 37.3%

Median price Jun-03: $563K
Median price Jun-04: $653K
Pct. change: 16.0%

Napa, Contra Costa and Sonoma counties all had price appreciation up over 19% last year.

Marin County was the only Bay Area county with price appreciation less than 10% last year. Marin County's median home price only went up 8.5% but the median home price in June 2004 was $690K.

Is real estate bubbling? Seems like. Is the market a bubble? I don't know. What will happen when interest rates go up? I don't know.

SF real estate prices haven't always only gone up. There was a decline for a while in the 90s. Prices then came back up and burst through the roof. There was a decline when the dot-com boom busted. We bought the loft space for 20% less than the seller had paid for it in 2000. Will the value go up or down from there?

Wanna buy? Can you afford it if the prices fall and you have to sell? Can you hang on? Do you hate paying out rent every month? The decision is yours.