Home Prices Drop in California

According to the state Association of Realtors, as swelling foreclosures drove down values, the home prices in California dropped 41 percent last month from a previous year which is more than double the US drop down.

The established group in Los Angeles said that in California, the average price for a single-family disconnected home dropped to $247,590 in February from $418,260 earlier. According to the National Association of Realtors, the average US price dropped to 16 percent in the same time and it is considered to be the second biggest drop on record.

“The median, for all its imperfections, tells a really interesting tale right now, it tells you what is and what is not selling. What’s selling right now is foreclosures,” said Andrew LePage, an analyst at research firm MDA DataQuick.

Of the existing California home sales, 58 percent was counted for foreclosure in February, compared with the 33 percent earlier, according to based MDA DataQuick. The research firm also said that in inland California, where the prices are lesser than the coastal areas, in the previous three months of 2008, reported for half the state’s mortgage defaults.

“The California median price has declined by a larger margin than the nationwide median price,” Leslie Appleton- Young, chief economist for the California Association of Realtors, quoted. “This can be attributed to the under $500,000 portion of the market, which has experienced larger price declines than the other market segments due to the large share of distressed homes for sale.”

The decline of the price in California, led to an increase of 83 percent in the count of houses traded in February from a previous year. The count of existing single-family isolated homes sold climbed to 620,410 on a yearly basis, increasing from 338,970 a year before. From January the sales dripped to 0.8 percent.

The association said that in California the average number of days it took to sell trade away a single-family home was 51.5 last month, a drop from 69.3 a year back. The months required to diminish the supply of houses on the market at the recent sales speed dripped to 6.5 months from 15.3 months a year back.

The average dropped 45 percent from the previous year to $715,000 in California’s most costly district, Santa Barbara County’s south coast, for houses last month. High Desert was the least expensive part, where the median fell 45 percent to $121,970, said the Realtors’ group told.

In the High Desert, the sales tripled last month, whereas in Santa Barbara’s south coast, it fell 9.4 percent.

In California, the average condominium price was $219,960 in February, from last year’s $367,540 it is a 40 percent down. The count of condo sales jumped to 52 percent from previous year.

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