SoCal median home price up in April from year ago
Associated Press
By Jacob Adelman
...Home sales in Southern California declined last month for the first time in nearly two years, as buyers appeared to time their purchases to cash in on a state tax credit and supplies of affordable inland properties dwindled, a tracking firm reported Tuesday. San Diego-based MDA DataQuick said home sales in the six-county region dropped about 1 percent last month from April 2009 to about 20,300, breaking what had been a 21-month run of consecutive year-over-year increases. Sales also fell about 1 percent from March...
...Richard Green, who directs the University of Southern California's Lusk Center for Real Estate, said the sales drop indicated that the market could be hitting a speed bump, possibly because obtaining credit is still difficult for many borrowers.
But he said he was encouraged by the price increases, which showed that most buyers over the last year have not lost equity in their homes.
"I think it's more good news than bad news, but obviously it's nothing so great that people should be dancing in the streets about it," he said of Tuesday's report...