Mark Williams

As evidenced by this article, tracking the market by using the median price as a yardstick becomes more and more misleading. With the explosion of sales on the low end using the median to reflect market value has become increasingly out of touch with what is going on in the various market segments. Areas with a predominance of mid to upper end properties reflect little decline in the median price (while values may actually be dropping, but low sales numbers do not yet reflect this trend) and areas with a wide cross section of properties are seeing activity mostly on the low end - thus showing huge decreases in the median price. It is little wonder that the public is confused and in disbelief when we tell them that the house that they would like to offer on has a market value only 10% below the peak! The news media needs to have a deeper understanding and more balanced reporting approach... otherwise this information becomes mis-information...

I am surprised to see Inman News doing the same thing that major media is doing - the headline of the above story is a negatively biased overview of the actual article. NAR reports sales increased 3.1% from June to July and the headline addresses the year over year drop -and ignores the 43% increase in CA sales volume.