A report from the San Francisco Business Times in California. "Bay Area home sales plummeted by 22 percent in December, marking the largest year-over-year decline in sales of for any month since at least 2016. 'The early year rush led to quite a bit of (buyer) fatigue,' said Selma Hepp, chief economist at Compass and author of the report."

"Hepp stressed that the late slowdown didn’t necessarily pose troubling indications of the 2019 market. Ultimately it might benefit homebuyers, she said, in helping balance out home prices inflated by a 'very undersupplied' market. As it stands, the monthly supply is still less than half of the six-month benchmark for a balanced market in most regions, the report said."

"'We’ve seen that the economy is not going to fall off the face of the Earth in 2019,' Hepp said. 'Sellers understand that they may need to lower prices and negotiate, and that’s a positive sign for buyers.'"

The Press Democrat. "Sonoma County’s housing market hit the skids in 2018, beginning a slowdown over the summer as buyers rebuffed fire-inflated home prices and ending the year with a thud. The county’s median home price peaked at an all-time record of $700,000 in June, then started to decline before ending the year at a median price of $639,000 in December. That price was an uptick from the year’s lowest monthly median of $615,000 in November, but a drop of 5.1 percent from $673,500 in December 2017."

"Rick Laws of Compass real estate brokerage said the shift in the local housing market that began at the end of last June was caused by buyers pushing back against sellers’ asking prices. He said it remains to be seen how much the Sonoma County market will be affected by the negative domestic and international economic factors already felt in other parts of the Bay Area and the state."

"The number of homes sold in Sonoma County from September through November plunged to low levels not seen in at least eight years. Then sales slid by almost 15 percent more in December, according to The Press Democrat’s latest housing report."

"'We’re going to have to watch that trend into next year to see how much of a trend it is,' Laws said of the potential for outside economic forces such as interest rates, trade wars and stock market volatility to push the local housing market into a tailspin. 'It’s time for the market to shift. We’ve been seeing large appreciation in this economic recovery for a good number of years. We’re not anticipating that we’re going to see that kind of appreciation.'"