No ‘rapid recovery’ for California real estate. See where the state’s price drop ranks

California’s real estate market is emerging from a brutal 2022.

The median home sale price dropped significantly last year in the Golden State. Redfin, the national online real estate listing and data firm, calculates that the typical sale price dropped roughly 4.4% over the course of last year, the third-steepest decline in the nation.

Meanwhile, the California Association of Realtors reported recently that the median sale price for a single-family home in California stood at $774,580 in December, a decline of nearly 3% over the previous year. Every region in the state saw price declines last year, led by an 11.5% decline in the Bay Area, according to CAR’s data.

And it appears the market could have been even worse.

While CAR’s chief economist Jordan Levine predicts the median sale price in California will decline nearly 9% this year, “home prices are holding up relatively well, despite rising interest rates and falling housing demand in recent months,” Levine wrote in a CAR news release.

“Tight housing inventory was a primary factor preventing prices from free falling as new active listings continued to dip to reach the lowest level in at least the past five years,” Levine wrote. “While depressed inventory will preclude major price declines beyond the 8.8 percent we forecast for this year, it will also slow sales growth and prevent the housing market from having a rapid recovery.”

The interactive map below shows how California’s 2022 price declines compare to the rest of the nation. Nearly every state west of the Rockies saw price drops, while some of the best numbers were seen in southern states such as Florida and South Carolina. Ohio, with a median sale price of just $228,600, had the largest price increase.

This story was originally published February 23, 2023 at 6:00 AM.