Southern California home prices barely above bubble peak

San Diego metro home prices are now above their median home values when prices peaked roughly a decade ago — $550,900 today and $543,600 when the bubble burst in 2007 — a gain of 1.3 percent. This is according to a new study by Zillow.

In the Los Angeles metro area (which includes Long Beach and Anaheim) median prices are now $611,100; they were $604,000 at the bubble peak. That's a gain of 1.2 percent.

But look at the Bay Area, center of the tech industry. San Francisco's median is now $859,000; it was $700,300 at its bubble peak. So the gain is a sturdy 22.7 percent.

But look at Silicon Valley, represented by the San Jose metro area. The median today is $1,027,100; at the bubble peak it was $745,300 — a gain of 37.8 percent.

The difference is no doubt the tech industry, big and bulging in both Silicon Valley and San Francisco. So the question now is: is tech a bubble? It was a colossal bubble in much of the 1990s, culminating with a crippling crash that began in 2000.

San Diego and Los Angeles are doing about the same as the nation as a whole. The nation's gain has been 2.1 percent. The median United States home value is now $4100 above the bubble peak, and almost half of individual homes are worth more than they were before the crash brought on by the bubble and Wall Street mischief that was tied to housing prices.