Foreclosure-heavy Inland Empire weighs on California home prices

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

California’s median home sales price rose 4% in May, nudged up by an increase in sales of higher-priced homes, MDA DataQuick reported today.

The statewide median sale price was $230,000 in May, up from $221,000 in April. That’s a 52% drop from the state’s peak median price of $484,000 in 2007.

Despite the bump in higher-end sales, foreclosures still comprised 51% of May sales.

Looking at the Southern California sales numbers released Wednesday, we see that in May, San Bernardino and Riverside County posted 7,548 home sales.

So of the 39,051 homes sold statewide in May, one out of five were in the foreclosure-heavy Inland Empire.

The news release isn’t posted on DataQuick’s website yet, but keep checking.

-- Peter Y. Hong