It’s not surprising that home values in some neighborhoods of Orinda and Lafayette rose slightly, according to a Contra Costa Times story  that found overall home prices in the East Bay have dropped a lot. What may  be surprising to some people is that parts of Fremont, specifically the Weibel and Vineyards-Avalon neighborhoods,  also saw slight gains from the first to second quarter of 2008.   Over the years,  lots of million-dollar homes have sprung up in Fremont, a place that draws them in part because of the city’s good schools. For example, the median home value $1,276,061 in the second quarter for a home in Fremont’s Vineyard-Avalon neighborhood.  

    Home values in the East Bay eroded at a faster rate during the spring than they did in the early months of 2008, an ominous hint that the housing market has yet to escape from a financial quagmire whose depths remain unplumbed.

During the second quarter of 2008, home values plunged on a year-to-year basis by 25.6 percent in Contra Costa County, and by 18.9 percent in Alameda County, according to a new report released Tuesday by Zillow.com, an online real estate community. The fortunes of East Bay communities varied widely, ranging from a 38 percent decline in part of Antioch to a nearly 2 percent increase in an Oakland hills neighborhood.

Nationwide, second-quarter home values fell by an average of 9.9 percent from the year before.

“There is definitely no bottom yet for prices,” said Dan Hamilton, director of the Santa Barbara-based USCB Economic Forecast Project. “This is not going to improve any time soon, probably not in 2008, anyway.”