California Home Prices and Sales Decline

Pasadena Star- News reports:

California's latest home sales and price report offers yet another sobering look at a battered industry.

Los Angeles County home sales plunged 37.6 percent in March compared with a year earlier and the region's median home price fell 25.6 percent to $431,950, according to the California Association of Realtors.

The report reveals how deeply the Southland's housing market has been affected by a lack of available funds for loans and continuing waves of home foreclosures.

Existing home sales in California fell 24.5 percent year over year, while the state's median home price plummeted 29 percent to $413,980.

Those numbers are certainly not uplifting. But they don't surprise Chris Vigil, a broker and licensed appraiser with Keller Williams Realty in Santa Fe Springs.

"I guess it's to be expected because of the inventory that's on the market," he said. "It's not a normal inventory because short sales and foreclosures are not normal."

Vigil, who operates a "distress sale/foreclosure" home tour every other Sunday in Whittier, said 30 to 40 percent of the available homes in his market are either poised for short sale or are foreclosure properties.