SCV Home prices tank, ctd

By Rider — Jeff Wilson

A reader calls the news reports yesterday about "tanking" SCV home prices sensational:

The article in SCVNews regarding the SCV Home Prices Tanking is a good example of poor journalism and sensationalizing a headline. Based on the headline you would assume that we are in a downward trend when in fact the previous 6 months shows an increase over the prior 6 months. Yes the median price for July was $350000 but Aug is trending at $390000. In SC we have homes that vary from $3 million to $100000. If a $3 million home closes you can bet it is going to skew the numbers for that month. One should look at the trend. The median price of homes in March, April, June and August are higher than any of the prior months.

Our reader includes a useful chart of median home prices in the last 12 months in Canyon Country, Newhall, Santa Clarita, Saugus, Stevenson Ranch and Valencia:

It'd be nice if local media could put sales information like this into context, like our reader has done. This town's main industry is (was?) home building & selling, so you'd think we'd have a more mature way of looking at this industry's health.

Thanks to our reader for the great graph.

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