“We’ve never seen a distortion of this effect. … This is a weird event,” NAR spokesman Walt Molony said. … Mr. Molony said the distortion is so significant that the NAR is working on an adjusted median price to better reflect what’s actually happening in most of the country.
Come on folks, if you call it the median, give us the median, and not some number you pulled out of your (applicable orifice).
The article describes how prices will rise modestly in ~3/4 of the country, but the median will still show a decrease because of large declines in the metro areas that appreciated rapidly. This does not make sense. The median price in the US is around $220,000, and prices in every metro area that experienced appreciation (and thus is primed for a decline)are significantly higher than the 220k national median. Even if the metro areas decline in price, they will still be more expensive than the national median- so the national median shouldn’t budge. It is the decline in volume at the high end of the market (cities in this case) that shifts the median downward, not a decline of prices in the cities.
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