California home prices tumbled a record 41 percent in August from a year earlier as foreclosure sales pushed down values in the most populous U.S. state.
The median price of an existing, single-family detached home fell to $350,140, the lowest since March 2003, and will likely fall further, the Los Angeles-based California Association of Realtors said today in a report. Sales increased 56.7 percent from August 2007 and 1.8 percent from July.
``While sales appear to have turned the corner, the median will experience additional downward pressure as we move into the off-peak season in the coming months, and will continue to face pressure from distressed sales,'' Leslie Appleton-Young, vice president and chief economist of the association, said in a statement.
More than 101,000 California households received a default notice, were warned of a pending auction or foreclosed on last month, RealtyTrac Inc., a seller of default data, said on Sept. 12. That was a third of the nation's total and represented one in 130 homes in the state. Prices fell in all 20 of the state's regions surveyed by the Realtors.
Eight of the 10 metropolitan areas with the highest foreclosure rates are in California, led by Stockton in first place, according to RealtyTrac. Merced, Modesto, Vallejo-Fairfield and Riverside-San Bernardino ranked second through fifth. Bakersfield, Salinas-Monterey and Sacramento ranked eighth through tenth.
11-Month Decline
California prices have declined for 11 straight months beginning in October 2007, although the rate of decrease has slowed, Richard Kleinhenz, deputy chief economist of the state Realtors group, said in an interview. The median drop in August was 0.4 percent higher than July's decline, which was 4.4 percent higher than June's.
