A drop in Marin single-family home sales last month marked a halt in the continuous growth of sales activity over the past several months.

A total of 184 single-family homes were sold in Marin in August at a median price of $822,500; both figures were up less than 2 percent from one year ago, MDA DataQuick reported Thursday.

In July, the median single-family home price in Marin was $725,500 based on 211 sales.

There were 207 single-family home sales in June, up from 171 in May, 130 in April and 111 in March.

While August home sales figures were a mixed bag of ups and downs for the county, sales and prices throughout the Bay Area plunged in response to a thinner inventory of "bargain" foreclosures and concern over the economy.

"In general, Marin has been the strongest market in the Bay Area in terms of surviving this downturn," said Cynthia Kroll, senior regional economist with the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.

Her conclusion came with one caveat.

The county's small sample size of sales, including a single new home sale last month, means "one has to be a little careful in evaluating this market."

Highlighting the sole new home sold last month, Kroll noted last month's median price for all home sales in Marin jumped 6 percent even though the price of single-family home sales went up only 2 percent.

"That must have been a really high-priced home,"

Kroll said Marin, with many residents employed in neighboring San Francisco, benefits from the city's fairly robust economy, compared with other counties in the region.

"Home sales are just down right now," she said. "The one place you may be seeing foreclosure impacts are the condo sales, but, again, small numbers (for Marin)."

There were 50 condo sales last month with a median price of $355,000, down 15 percent from the $415,000 median a year earlier. Last month's median showed a rise from the $340,000 median price for 51 condo sales in July.

For all home sales in the county, the median was $713,000, up from the $675,000 median a year ago. The median price also showed an increase from July's median of $650,000.

Marin had a total of 235 home sales last month, down 5 percent from 247 sales in August 2008.

Throughout the Bay Area, 7,518 new and resale homes and condos sold. That was down 14 percent from the 8,771 sales in July, but up 4 percent from the 7,232 sales one year ago.

The median price paid for a Bay Area home last month dropped to $360,000, down 9 percent from the July median of $395,000, the first month-to-month decline after several months of Bay Area price increases. Last month's median was a 20 percent drop from the $447,000 median one year ago.

"Part of the mid-summer pause in the market could have been caused by home shoppers becoming frustrated by market conditions they didn't anticipate," said John Walsh, MDA DataQuick president. "In many cases there were fewer homes, especially cheap foreclosures, to choose from, and lots of talk about multiple offers and all-cash deals. It might have driven some back to the sidelines."

Foreclosure sales made up 33 percent of all August resales, a significant percentage, but down from equaling half of all sales for most of the past year.

In Marin, such distressed properties were 14 percent of all county home sales, down from 16 percent in July, but equal to the portion of foreclosures that made up home sales in August 2008. Marin foreclosure sales hit a peak of 26 percent of all sales in January of this year.

Contact Jim Staats via e-mail at jstaats@marinij.com