California home prices drop almost 15 percent

The bad news in the California real estate industry- at least for sellers, has been relentless. The latest report from DataQuick- a real estate research firm, shows that the medial home price in California is now $402,000 last month, down 14.8 percent from $472,000 in the year-ago period, and home sales in the state have plummeted more than 40 percent from a year ago. As reported by AP, “The state has seen sales decline year-over-year for 27 straight months as the once-booming housing market tanked and a credit crisis forced mortgage lenders to scale back so-called jumbo mortgages that exceed $417,000. That’s helped skew the median home price downward because fewer jumbo loans have translated into fewer high-end homes being sold. The percentage of homes purchased with jumbo loans last month fell nearly 70 percent from December 2006″.