In most places, if home prices jumped up to a median of $835,000, alarm bells would ring, and wannabe buyers would think twice. In the Bay Area, November’s price hike is significant for another reason — it actually suggests good news if you’re searching for a home.

That’s because throughout the nine-county region, the median price of an existing single-family house increased just 1 percent last month compared to the year before, according to data released Friday by real estate firm CoreLogic. In some counties, including Santa Clara, the median sale price fell — further evidence that the Bay Area’s runaway market has hit a slowdown. Experts blame mortgage interest rates rising this fall, coupled with buyer fatigue. The number of recorded sales dropped 14 percent from the year before, making last month the slowest November in three years.

“There’s still a lot of people unable and unwilling to buy at the prices they faced over the last couple of months,” said CoreLogic analyst Andrew LePage.

Still, as Bay Area prices remain among the highest in the country, experts say prospective buyers should be cautious before celebrating, and owners with wealth concentrated in their homes have no need to panic.

The median sale price for an existing house, excluding condos, in Santa Clara County was $1.15 million in November, down 2 percent from $1.175 million at the same time last year, according to CoreLogic. It’s the first time prices have dropped in the county on a year-over-year basis since August 2016 and the largest drop since January 2012, LePage said.

Sales of existing homes in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties dropped 15 percent last month from the year before, while sales fell 11 percent in Alameda County and nearly 9 percent in San Francisco. Across the Bay Area, November marked the sixth straight month of declining sales.

“I saw in November a huge pause,” said San Jose agent Gustavo Gonzalez, president-elect of the Santa Clara County Association of Realtors. “I don’t know what happened, but the market just kind of stopped for a few weeks. And then in December it kicked up again.”

Case in point: a San Jose house that he listed for $700,000 in early November. The home sat for four or five weeks, then suddenly received multiple offers in December and recently sold above asking price.

Gonzalez speculates buyers got spooked last month over talk that the real estate market had gone as high as it could, prompting them to wait in hopes prices would come down.

“Nobody wants to buy at the peak,” he said.

Prices dropped more dramatically in November in Napa and Sonoma counties, where wildfires destroyed homes, communities and lives in October 2017. The median sale price for an existing house fell nearly 11 percent in Napa County and almost 8 percent in Sonoma County compared to last November. Prices rose in those communities following the fires, LePage said, so last month’s dips might be attributable to a correction of that spike.

Other counties had modest or no price changes — Alameda County saw its median sale price for an existing single-family home rise 3 percent, while prices remained flat in San Francisco and San Mateo counties.

In the East Bay, real estate agent William Doerlich is seeing more price reductions and noticing that homes aren’t selling quite as quickly or for as much money as they did a few months before.

“It’s definitely been a bit of a slowdown, but you know what? When you’ve been in the hyper market we’ve been in for the last seven or eight years, it’s not a catastrophe,” said Doerlich, who served as 2017 president of the Bay East Association of Realtors. “Because if you talk to other people in other areas of the country and they look at our numbers now, they’re going, ‘Wow, that’s a fantastic market.’ ”

Mortgage interest rates also are playing a role in the fluctuations. The average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage jumped up almost 1 percent between November 2017 and last month, rising from 3.9 percent to 4.8 percent, according to Freddie Mac. That means that while the median price of an existing single-family home rose just 1 percent in the Bay Area, the monthly mortgage payments on that house rose 13 percent, according to LePage.

The counties that saw the most dramatic year-over-year price increases were those with some of the Bay Area’s cheapest homes. In Contra Costa County, the median price of an existing single-family home rose 6 percent to $600,550. In Solano County, the median price jumped 7 percent to $430,000.

“That’s where the most people can afford to buy, so they’re seeing more demand at this point,” LePage said.

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Doerlich is confident the Bay Area will have a strong 2019. The demand is there, he said.

“I’m still getting calls this time of year,” Doerlich said. “I got a call from someone on Christmas Day.”