That being said, the South Pasadena real estate market turned in an excellent performance in 2008 compared to Pasadena, Altadena, and Los Angeles. I could go on and on. The median price of a South Pasadena property including single family, townhomes and condo’s declined a measly 5% from $815,000 in 2007 to $773,500 this year. Basically a rounding error.

Single family homes were the blue ribbon award winner. The median price actually increased (that’s a word we have not seen much this year) from $920,000 last year to $935,000 this year. An increase of 1.6%. Cue the music!

Despite the increase in the median price of a single family home, South Pasadena does exhibit many of the characteristics of other real estate markets, both locally and nationally. Condominiums and townhomes for example have shown greater declines in median prices and also increased selling times in all areas. Unit sales this year were just a little better than half of what they were last year and prices declined about 10% overall.

As noticed in other markets, the sales activity on homes over $1 million has been pretty consistent. On of the reasons South Pas has performed so well this year is that the market for high priced properties is disproportionate to entry level or first time buyer price points. Of the 80 homes sold in ’08, 34 of them were sold over $1 million, while only 4 were sold for less than $500K.

The median price of a South Pasadena condo / townhome is almost the same price as a Pasadena single family home. In all real estate market ups and downs, therein lies a lesson. The education learned here is how to avoid a real estate market decline. Evidently the key is to look for a small homogenous community with less than 5000 households and a highly regarded school district.