Flat pricing?
Local experts say those figures are outdated. Gary Crabtree, a local appraiser who compiles a monthly report on Bakersfield market trends, says median home sale prices in the region rose 2% in July compared with the year before.
The time that unsold inventory remains on the market has jumped 400%, from 1.7 months to 8.5 months. And the time homes have spent on the market has more than tripled, from 12 days to 38 days. Even that last figure can be deceiving, Crabtree says. He thinks agents are playing what he calls the "re-listing game," or taking a property off the market and then putting it back on again so that the "days on market" clock starts anew.
"Why shouldn't there be retrenchment in housing?" said Stuart Gabriel, director of the University of Southern California's Lusk Center for Real Estate. "It's appropriate that housing take a breather."