California Housing Slump Shows Signs of Ending

California's housing slump showed improvement in March, with sales of existing single-family homes increasing 64% from the privious year and median home prices rising month-to-month for the first time since August 2007, according to the California Association of Realtors.

The state saw sales of 522,980 existing single-family homes in March, compared with 319,290 in the year-earlier period, the report said. Inventory of unsold homes fell in March to a three-year low of only five months, according to a report released Monday. That compares with 12.2 months of inventory the group reported for March 2008.

Stimulus efforts helped the state's home sales in the month, said Delores Conway, a professor at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business. Some Californians benefited from about $8,000 in credit for first-time home buyers from the federal economic-stimulus plan, and some from an additional $10,000 credit from a state stimulus measure.