Calif. house market sees more gains

The median price paid for a home statewide was US$257,000 in October, up 2.4 percent from September and down 7.6 percent from October 2008, according to MDA DataQuick, a real-estate research firm based in San Diego.

It was the narrowest annual monthly decline for the statewide median home price since September 2007. The median is the point at which half the homes sold for more and half sold for less.

“The low-end housing market is recovering, but slowly,” economist Kenneth Rosen of the University of California, Berkeley, said. “Prices have bottomed at the entry-level part of the marketplace.”

About 41,280 homes were sold statewide last month, a 2.6 percent increase from September and a 2.4 percent decrease from October 2008.

In Southern California, the median price paid for all homes in six Southland counties rose to US$280,000, up 1.8 percent compared with the previous month, and the number of homes sold increased 2.8 percent.

In the San Francisco Bay area, the median price paid for all homes in the nine-county region reached US$390,000, up 6.8 percent from September and 4 percent from October 2008, and homes costing more than US$500,000 accounted for a larger portion of sales.

A total of 7,933 Bay Area homes were sold last month, up 0.7 percent from 7,879 in September and 4.2 percent from 7,613 in October 2008.

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