Home prices see 8 percent drop

The median price of a San Fernando Valley home hit $400,000 in July - an 8 percent drop from a year earlier and the smallest slide in 19 months, a real-estate trade association said Thursday. Gregory J. Wilcox in the Daily News.

Increasing sales and tightening inventory were credited with keeping the price from falling farther from the $435,000 median recorded in July 2008. And it's the first single-digit drop since a 6 percent decline in November 2007, when the median price fell to $557,500 from $595,000 a year earlier, according to the Southland Regional Association of Realtors.