Misleading Reporting of South Bay Median Home Price Decline

In today’s South Bay Daily Breeze, the headlines proclaimed : “HOME PRICES CONTINUE TO SLIDE IN SOUTH BAY”. The article then goes on to say that the Median Home Price in the South Bay “continued to tumble in February, with a steep year-over-year decline for the month… The median price of a local home fell 13.5 per cent to $510,000 last month, compared with the same period last year.” The same article reported that the median sales price of a home in the South Bay Beach Cities also declined 28.6% to $850,000 compared to the prior year.

What makes this on-going reporting misleading, is that as long as the media compares home prices only to a year ago, the biased reporting will continue to show huge price declines, when in actuality the prices have begun to stabilize and actually move up in several markets in recent months. For example, the following is the published chart of median home prices for last month:

Compared to last month, the median sales price of a home in the South Bay actually increased in February from the above reported $477,500 for January to $510,000 in February, an almost 7% increase over the prior month. The median sales price for a home in the Beach Cities of the South Bay (El Segundo, Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, Playa del Rey and Redondo Beach) increased from $744,000 in January to $859,000 in February, a 14% increase over the prior month.

The media needs to tell the full story as to what is going on in the real estate markets, and compare sales prices on a month to month basis so that consumers can get a true sense as to whether prices have stabilized or in fact are starting to improve.

For more information about Palos Verdes Real Estate and buying or selling a home on the Palos Verdes peninsula, visit my website at https://www.maureenmegowan.com