This has been going on longer than you think. I sold my condo in Hillcrest last year; with my realtor’s advice (this guy has been in the business and the neighborhood a long time), we listed it at $450K. It sold about two months later with the recorded sale price at $430K. What the recorded price didn’t show, however, was that I paid the seller $10K in “buyer loan costs”. In effect I sold the unit for $420K, a 6.6% decrease in the original listed price. To anyone just looking at the official numbers, however, this was only a 4.4% decrease. AND THAT WAS A YEAR AGO! Lord only knows what sort of monkey business is going on now…