California's housing market can see a very faint glimmer at the end of the tunnel.

Unfortunately, it'll be at least another year before the Golden State's housing market really sees the light.

The latest Anderson Forecast at the University of California in Los Angeles reports that California has suffered through several years of declining sales and rising foreclosures.

First quarter mortgage defaults in California rose 143 percent -- the highest level in 15 years, according to La Jolla, California-based DataQuick Information Systems.

But slow sales and rising inventories made home prices more affordable. More bargain-hunters have been attracted to the market, according to Ryan Ratcliff, an Anderson Forecast economist.

In April, the median price for single-family homes crashed 32 percent year-over-year, pushing the median price down $200,000, according to California Association of Realtors.

However, during the same period, home sales rose 2.5 percent, according to the association.

Don't expect a quick turnaround in the Golden State.

High foreclosure rates are expected to continue into 2009, the report said, with a "normal" market "still a long way off."

The report says California is about half way through a three-stage market slump with a mountain of inventory to get through before there's a full recovery.

Some regional sales continue to fall in the Golden State.

Home sales -- both houses and condos -- in southern California dropped 15 percent last month to the lowest level for a May in two decades. Prices spiraled down 27 percent, according to DataQuick.

The median home price, $370,000 last month, is as low as it's been in southern California since March 2004.

In the San Francisco Bay Area sales were down year-over-year more than 23 percent, as home sales in May dipped to their slowest pace at least since 1988, when DataQuick began monitoring sales. One in four homes sold in May in the 9-county area were foreclosure properties..

The median price paid for a Bay Area home was $517,000, down a record 21.7 percent from $660,000 in May last year and down 22.3 percent from the peak $665,000 median in June and July 2007.

The last time the Bay Area median was lower than $517,000 was back in September 2004, when it was $510,000.

In California, the "unprecedented speed of the price adjustment means that instead of several years of slow bleeding (like the 1990s), we have compressed the necessary adjustment into two years of intense housing pain," Ratcliff wrote in the Anderson Forecast report.

Published: June 23, 2008

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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.