Median prices almost always conceal large disparities in the prices of the underlying individual sales – this is particularly true for larger cities: in San Francisco for example, median house prices by neighborhood range from $465,000 to $4,000,000, and there will be similar disparities in Oakland and San Jose. But median prices can be valuable to show appreciation trends, and to some degree, to compare general home values between different areas. The last quarter was a period of rapid price appreciation virtually everywhere on this map.
