Around this time last year, a number of experts said the housing market had finally hit bottom.

Turns out those were just branches on the way down.

New figures released this week show that median sales prices continue to fall across the region and nationwide as distressed properties maintain their grip on the market.

So when will we finally see the end of this maddening descent?

"We were hopeful it was a year ago, but apparently not," said Greg Paquin, president of the Gregory Group, a real estate information and consulting company. "I think it's tough to predict anymore."

Zillow, which operates a popular real estate market website, now predicts that home prices nationally won't hit bottom until 2012 at the earliest.

Locally, the Sacramento Association of Realtors this week released April home sales figures for Sacramento County and West Sacramento. The area saw the median resale price for a single-family home drop to $169,900 in April – down 8.2 percent from April 2010. It was the ninth straight month without a year-over-year increase.

The April median was slightly higher than the March figure of $166,000 – the lowest monthly median sale price since March 2001.

The preponderance of distressed properties is pushing prices ever lower. Two-thirds of last month's sales in Sacramento County and West Sacramento were either foreclosures or short sales, the Sacramento Association of Realtors reported.

As anemic as they seemed at the time, last year's prices also were artificially inflated by federal tax credits that boosted demand, said Jeff Michael, director of the University of the Pacific's Business Forecasting Center. Those credits have since expired.

Given the effect of the credit, a 10 percent year-over-year drop isn't all that surprising, Michael said.

Perhaps more odd is the fact that housing inventory has remained low at the same time prices have been falling, said Doug Covill, the Sacramento Association of Realtors' president. In April, there was 2.9 months' worth of inventory in the area – meaning there were enough homes for sale to meet current market demand for 2.9 months. Anything less than three months of inventory is considered a seller's market. Falling prices would seem to go counter to the law of supply and demand.

Nationally, home prices also continue to decline, but not as steeply as here. Zillow reported this week that 51.2 percent of Sacramento homeowners owe more than their houses are worth, compared with 28.4 percent nationwide.

Experts said three key factors make the pain here especially harsh:

• High unemployment is making it hard for people to buy and hurting confidence.

• The volume of distressed properties on the market is lowering values for everyone else.

• The high percentage of government employees in Sacramento and ongoing budget negotiations are keeping many on the sidelines.

"We're a little bit more under water than other communities," Paquin said. "Job growth is the biggest factor right now."

While the economy might be hurting the real estate market, low median prices can in turn harm the economy.

Building new homes doesn't make economic sense if existing homes are cheap, Michael said. "The further these home prices sink, the further away we are from getting our construction industry back on its feet."

The construction industry has been a crucial contributor to the regional economy in recent years, he added.

There are, however, some winners in this market: those with the means to shop for deals.

"It's been an exciting time to be a buyer in some of these areas," said Kris Vogt, president of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage's Sacramento-Tahoe region.

Meena Lee, an agent for Cook Realty, said some people are renting out their existing homes and looking for something bigger.

"There are a lot of people buying up right now," Lee said.

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