"The Bay Area is a sunlight part of California," said Delores Conway, director of the Casden Real Estate Economics Forecast at USC. "(It) looks very robust with job growth picking up. Home price appreciation has slowed but the number of sales is not down that much." Another telling indicator, she said, is that apartment rental prices are on the upswing here, with monthly rents in San Francisco up 7 percent in both 2005 and 2006, and up 10 percent in San Jose in 2006. That shows that fundamental demand for housing remains strong, she said. Many forecasters at the event said the impact of the subprime mortgage fiasco, in which loans to people with tarnished credit have begun seeing high default rates, has not been as severe as some reports predicted. But some fallout could linger.
