California real estate market still slumping

“The California real estate market continued its slump in March, with the volume of existing-home sales tumbling 20.8 percent compared with a year ago, while median prices were up 3.2 percent, according to a report released Tuesday by the California Association of Realtors. ‘March is typically the kickoff month for the peak (selling) season, but while there was (a rise) in sales (in some individual markets), at the statewide level our seasonally adjusted numbers fell by 8 percent month to month,’ said Robert Kleinhenz, deputy chief economist of the industry trade group. March’s sales of 427,110 existing single-family detached homes was lower than the 450,000 monthly home sales the state has averaged for the past eight months. The median price for an existing single-family home rose to $580,090, up from $562,130 a year ago. While that 3.2 percent increase slightly outpaced the rate of inflation, Kleinhenz and others said that the increase is misleading, as prices fell in many geographic areas. Christopher Thornberg, a principal with Beacon Economics in San Francisco, put it bluntly. ‘The median price is a bunch of hogwash,” he said. “You can have prices looking like they’re up when they’re down, because it is incredibly subject to where slowdowns are occurring. If there is more slowdown in a (lower-priced market), then you could show the median price going up just because there is a shift in the type of product being sold’.”