Bit of a Drop, But Also A Rise

The National Assn. of Realtors released their quarterly numbers yesterday, reporting that distressed sales (foreclosures and short sales) accounted for 30 percent of all transactions nationwide in the third quarter. The median sale price of a home in the Los Angeles area is now $345,000, down 11.5 percent from a year earlier. On the upside, that's a rise from the second quarter 2009, when the median sale home was $311,00, according to the Los Angeles Times. To give you a little perspective, the median home sale price in the LA area in 2007 was $593,600. (Download the PDF chart here.) And some good news: Thanks to the 1970s DDT ban, as well as conservation efforts, the brown pelican is no longer on the endangered list. Lots of high-fives going on in pelican nests today. [LA Times/Realtor.org]