PARTIES DIFFER ON HOME TRENDS.

Byline: Gregory J. Wilcox Staff Writer

A steep decline in Bay Area new-home prices could be the pinprick that pops the state's appreciation bubble, a company that markets foreclosure information said Tuesday. But it's not a view shared by many analysts and home-building executives.

Sacramento-based Foreclosures.com said that during October, the median price of a new home in Alameda County plunged an annual 25.9 percent to $453,250, the biggest drop of four Bay Area counties.

Company president Alexis McGee said Tuesday that while tight supplies have kept prices high throughout the state, the price drop for new homes may signal that the supply and demand equation may start moving toward a balance point.

The Bay Area has some of the most expensive homes in the state.

``It seems like the median-priced homes are moving fine . . . but the high-end market is stagnant up there,'' McGee said.

She also said that notices of default, the first step in the foreclosure process, are up in the Bay Area and Southern California, another troubling sign for the residential real estate market.

For example, she said that through the third quarter of this year defaults increased 11 percent in Los Angeles County.

In October, she said, default notices in Los Angeles County increased to 8,046 from 5,928 the year before.

John Karevoll, an analyst at DataQuick Information Systems, which tracks the real estate market, chuckled when informed of Foreclosures.com's report.

``It's flat-out wrong,'' he said of the default notice count.

His tracking says that during the year's first nine months, default notices declined 22.6 percent in the county. ``And I could give you each and every address, if it came to that,'' he said.

During November, 936 default notices were issued in the county, down from 1,531 a year ago.

And Foreclosures.com's price survey also runs counter to the trend presented by the ``Prestige Home Index'' compiled by San Francisco-based First Republic Bank. It tracks the change in value of a pool of homes valued at $1 million or more.

The index for the third quarter shows values increasing an annual 17 percent in Los Angles County, with Bay Area values falling 0.2 percent annually but rising 2.1 percent from the second quarter.

``I cannot comment on that because it doesn't match what I have. So we disagree,'' McGee said.

Guy Bjerke, acting chief executive officer of the Home Builders Association of Northern California, also doubted whether new home values have fell.

``I can't find any anecdotal or hard evidence that it's true.''

He, along with Karevoll, just thinks it's a different mix of homes on the market now versus a year ago.

For example, there has been a surge of multifamily construction like apartments and condominiums. And when condominiums come on the market, they are priced less than new homes.

``Just looking at Alameda County for the first 10 months of this year we've seen a 171-percent increase in multifamily units versus 2002. The mix of units that are coming out of the ground this year are dramatically different,'' Bjerke said.

Gregory J. Wilcox, [phone]

greg.wilcox(at)dailynews.com