This is the forecast for 2009 by the California Association of Realtors given out at the CAR Expo on October 15th. Note the median price is forecast to be down 6% to $358,000 for 2009. August's median price was reported to be $350,890 and September's median price was reported to be $316,480. Now it is absolutely the case that mix shift makes up a huge part for such declines but at no point do they justify how the mix shift will change or depreciation will stop. In fact their latest Economic Trends article has the following sentence, "The September median price was last in the low $300,000 range in early 2002, and there is no sign that home prices will soon flatten out". So why, when faced by the one crowd whose job it is to educate and prepare for the upcoming season do they sugar coat the price decline issue? It is really unfortunate that they can't bring themselves to be realistic as good information will be one of the things that will help this situation normalize.
