O.C. housing market cools

The Orange County Register reports on cooling:

* Orange County slipped from last year's Top 10 list of regions with the fastest-rising prices. It's now No. 65 in a national home-price index, with price gains of 15.7 percent in the third quarter of 2005.
* Orange County's median home price (the point at which half the homes sold for more and half sold for less) shot back up to $617,000 in the four weeks ending Nov. 17, tying August's monthly record, according to house-tracker DataQuick.
* Sales volume continued the typical autumn slump, dropping to 3,718, down 3 percent from a year ago.
* Affordability dropped as home prices rose, a new survey by the National Association of Home Builders indicates: The median-income household could afford just 3.2 percent of O.C. homes sold during the third quarter, making O.C. the fourth least-affordable metro area in the nation. That's down from 4.4 percent a quarter earlier.

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