Median home prices in the Golden State fell in September by 2 percent to more than 4 percent slashing $8,000 off the price of condos and $25,000 of the price of single-family detached homes in September.

But don't expect a fire sale.

The normal seasonal downturn in prices left condo prices $55,200 ahead of where they were last year and single-family homes were more than $80,000 ahead of the 2004 game, according to the California Association of Realtors (CAR).

Sales were also on par.

Statewide, year-to-year single-family home sales were up 3.9 percent and condo sales rose 4.5 percent. Month-to-month, single-family home sales rose "2.9 percent condo sales fell 11.1 percent.

"The September median home price compared with August has fallen every year since 1993, and in 20 of the last 26 years," said CAR. President Jim Hamilton. "This year is no exception and is part of the seasonal shift to an off-peak period in the real estate market as we approach year's end.

"Despite the seasonal slow down for the market as a whole, the median price in the High Desert, Riverside/San Bernardino, Santa Barbara South Coast and San Luis Obispo regions hit record highs last month," he said.

The full Santa Barbara County, however, was the only county with across the board negative numbers, prices were down month-to-month (25.5 percent) and down year-to-year (19.2 percent) as were month-to-month sales (down 18.1 percent) and year-to-year sales (down 12.3 percent). North Santa Barbara County alone, revealed the opposite, across the board increases in month-to-month and year-to-year sales and prices, while the Santa Barbara South Coast was mixed.

Santa Barbara County's mix of statistics north and south reflected the mix state wide.

Month-to-month prices fell in 14 of the 20 regions CAR tracks, with all the price increases occurring in regions from central California (San Luis Obispo) to the south. Only Santa Barbara County revealed a year-to-year price drop.

Fourteen of the 20 regions yielded sales drops from August to September, only nine yielded year-to-year sales declines.

Year-to-year, the biggest price jump was in the posh Santa Barbara South Coast region where home prices jumped a cool 55.3 percent, but the area also had the worst year-to-year numbers for sales which plummeted 34.5 percent.

The year-to-year sales leader was San Luis Obispo where sales soared 30.5 percent. All of Santa Barbara County turned in the largest price decline, 19.2 percent.

The sales numbers reveal prices have yet to deter consumers from buying homes in California, but the Public Policy Institute's recent "California's Newest Homeowners: Affording the Unaffordable" says buyers make housing affordable by taking risks.

In the past two years, nearly 40 percent the state's home buyers ignored federal guidelines and spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing. That's a greater share than any other state. Twenty percent of the state's home owners spent more than 50 percent of their income on housing, the institute found.

Some compromise on size and buy cheaper housing inland, but others are resorting to creative financing measures deemed riskier than the plain vanilla 30-year fixed rate mortgage.

Zero-down loans, interest-only loans, choose-your-own-payment loans, piggy-back mortgages and other loans with the leverage necessary to get into a California home are de rigueur.

Published: October 28, 2005

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.