The Tribune recently reported the median prices for SLO County homes rose last month. While this may be true, it may also be caused by the continued sales of properties over 1 million dollars. If high end home continue to sell when everything else slows down it will increase the median and tend to skew our interpretation of real events. One need only look at the quantity of price reductions of homes currently for sale to realize that prices for most homes continue to decline. Data for the following chart comes from the MLS.

SLO price reductions

I believe the we could plot a similar curve for the 5 cities area. I still believe this decline in prices will bottom out in the 4th quarter 2006.