California Home Prices Plunge

The AP reports:

Median home prices plunged in many of California's most populous counties in February, with Southern California leading the slide with an overall drop of 17.9 percent compared to a year earlier, according to new housing data released Thursday.


The drops reflect a deepening housing crisis in the state, which saw home values soar during the housing boom then decline sharply in most areas.

Median home prices fell this year in 15 major counties, DataQuick Information Systems said.

The median price in a six-county area of Southern California fell to $408,000 -- the lowest level since October 2004, when it was $402,500. That median is 19.2 percent below the region's peak price of $505,000 last summer, and it's 1.7 percent below January's median, the firm said.

In the nine counties of the San Francisco Bay Area, the median price fell 11.6 percent to $548,000 compared to a year earlier and 17.6 percent from the region's peak median price of $665,000 last summer. Bay Area prices were essentially flat from January.