While Southern California home sales are at their lowest levels since 2005, DataQuick's President Marshall Prentice is optimistic that housing demand is "building up". Says Prentice, "These are interesting times because the slowdown in home sales isn't part of a broader economic slowdown, it's a post-frenzy re-balancing act. The last time we had sales this slow, Southern California had been in recession for a few years. Jobs were being lost in droves, people were leaving the area and home prices fell significantly. This time around we haven't seen that, sellers are holding out and we can only assume demand is building up." The median price paid for a Southern California home was $505,000 for July 2007, the same as the record high recorded in March, April and May of 2007. The median was up 0.6% from June's median of $502,000, and up 3.7% from the July 2006 median of $487,000 according to DataQuick. The market mix shows fewer lower-cost homes selling now, and after adjusting for this factor DataQuick says that Southern California home prices are about 3% below last year's levels. Interesting to note is that these declines are in the lower half of the market, while the upper half of the market shows flat or increasing prices. And of course since these numbers are for all of Southern California, they need to be adjusted for each region, since areas like Santa Clarita experience different levels of activity than many other areas in the Southern California region. My buyers just lost out on a 3-way bid for a home in Bridgeport last week, so the market is still competitive in some areas. Foreclosures continue to have a limited impact on home prices, although "pockets of foreclosure discounts appear to be emerging in some local Inland Empire and High Desert markets". In Santa Clarita there has been very limited foreclosure activity thus far, although nearby Palmdale and Lancaster are experiencing some of the highest levels of foreclosure activity in the Southern California region. | 
