Can someone help me understand these two statements:
“The market ended the year with a median price of $483,000 for all homes, off 6.4 percent from December 2005.”
“The overall median price of a home in the county last year slipped 0.8 percent, to $490,000, down from 2005’s $494,000. The annual decline was the first since a 1.8 percent drop from 1994 to 1995, when the median stood at $166,000.”
I was trying to figure that out myself. My thoughts: Reporters are typically not good at math, but good with words. However, they got the math right and left out some words that would clarify matters.
It seems that the 0.8% decline is a comparison of the median from the entire year of 2005 with all of 2006.
The decline of 6.4% compares only December 2005 with December 2006.
Bottom line : 6.4 % drop December to December. The 0.8% number is diluted and putting faith in it is deluded.
