SoCal home prices drop to $250K

Yesterday, Dataquick reported that the January median home price across all of Southern California dropped to an even $250,000.

That's pretty amazing, especially when you consider that the median home price was about a half million dollars just a few years ago.

As shown to the right, home prices in all six counties are now down more than forty percent from their peak paced by an incredible decline of 57.4 percent in San Berdoo.

As shown below, the median sales price for all counties except for Los Angeles County now go back to before 2002 or earlier.

Since Marshall "almost all if not all of those gains are here to stay" Prentice is now retired, new DataQuick President John Walsh provides the commentary:

We've heard a lot of talk, regarding the decline in home values, about how 'no one wants to catch a falling knife.' But for months we've seen quite a flurry of sales activity in many inland areas where prices have fallen more in line with local incomes. We can only assume that many first-time buyers, investors and others buying in these areas have concluded it's not worth trying to time the price bottom perfectly.

They're happy to lock in substantial discounts relative to the peak. Whether the inland sales pace holds will hinge on factors such as the health of the job market, the availability and cost of financing, and the new efforts to stem foreclosures and halt price depreciation - efforts that could eventually tame inland bargain hunting.

Well put.

Year-over-year home price declines have got to be hitting a bottom pretty soon...
It was a big deal around here back in 2006 when San Diego County was the first area to post an annual decline in sales price. Little did we know that a modest single digit decline would be 30-40-50 percent annual declines a couple years later.