by Calculated Risk on 8/14/2014 01:34:00 PM

From DataQuick: Sluggish Bay Area Home Sales in July; Prices Up – at a Slower Pace

A total of 8,474 new and resale houses and condos sold in the nine-county Bay Area last month. That was up 7.1 percent from 7,915 in June and down 9.3 percent from 9,339 in July last year, according to Irvine-based CoreLogic DataQuick, a real estate information service.

Bay Area sales usually decline around 5 percent from June to July. Sales for the month of July have varied from 6,666 in 1995 to 14,258 in 2004. The average since 1988, when CoreLogic DataQuick statistics begin, is 9,333. ...
...
Last month foreclosure resales – homes that had been foreclosed on in the prior 12 months – accounted for 2.7 percent of resales, down from a revised 2.9 percent from the month before, and down from 4.6 percent a year ago. Foreclosure resales in the Bay Area peaked at 52.0 percent in February 2009, while the monthly average over the past 17 years is 9.8 percent.

Short sales – transactions where the sale price fell short of what was owed on the property – made up an estimated 4.2 percent of Bay Area resales last month. That was down from an estimated 4.4 percent in June and down from 8.5 percent a year earlier.

Last month absentee buyers – mostly investors – accounted for 18.8 percent of all Bay Area home sales, which was the lowest absentee share of purchases since that figure was 18.5 percent in September 2010.
emphasis added

A few key year-over-year trends: 1) declining distressed sales, 2) generally declining investor buying, 3) flat or declining total sales, but 4) flat or some increase in non-distressed sales.

Though total sales were down 9.3% year-over-year, the percent of non-distressed sales was down about 2%.