The median home price in Los Angeles County? $597K

Prospective homebuyers in Los Angeles will find an ounce or two of good news in the latest report from real state tracker CoreLogic.

Prices in Los Angeles County remain relatively flat, with the median ticking up just 2.1 percent both month-over-month and year-over-year in March to $597,500. It’s an increase—but a small one. Prices this year are growing at a much slower pace than they did in 2018.

“For a variety of reasons, in recent months prices have more or less flattened out,” says CoreLogic analyst Andrew LePage. “The market has changed a lot in the last year.”

In the first half of last year, prices surged, notching an all-time high of $615,000 in June.

But the biggest news out of the report? The median price paid for all homes across Southern California, a region that also includes Orange, Ventura, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego counties, dipped last month—the first annual decrease in seven years.

It was by the slimmest of amounts—0.1 percent—but until March, the median had increased year-over-year for 83 consecutive months, according to CoreLogic.

“This reflects both a flattening of home prices in recent months as well as a shift in market mix, where sales in higher-cost areas represent a slightly lower share of all activity,” says LePage.

The report also looks at how many homes were sold in March: 5,749, a 36.7 percent bump from February but a 15.5 percent drop from March 2018.

The California Association of Realtors, which tracks existing sales and not new construction, pegs LA County’s median price at $525,520, a 0.7 percent decrease from February and a 2.9 percent decline from March 2018.