Culver City Observer -

The median price of a single-family home in the state reached a record $600,860 in May, the California Association of Realtors said last week, while prices in Culver City and the rest of the Los Angeles Metro Area jumped 2.9 percent from the previous month and a whopping 9.3 percent from a year earlier.

Separately, though, figures published by real estate web site Zillow.com this week suggest that many of the houses and condos that are currently for sale in Culver City are already in the foreclosure or pre-foreclosure process.

The statewide median sales price of $600,860 was up 2.8 percent from April’s $584,460 and 9.2 percent from $559,230 in May 2017, fueled by a staggering 26.9 percent year-over-year price hike in San Francisco. The median sales price in the less-pricey L.A. Metro area was $530,000, up from $515,000 in April and $485,000 one year earlier.

The median price is a midpoint, with half of all homes selling for more than that amount and half selling for less.

Despite the strong price gains, statewide sales fell 4.6 percent in May from the previous year and a steeper 5.6 percent in in the Los Angeles area, as the inventory of lower-priced homes remained near their all-time lows and some buyers were knocked out of the home-buying market by rising mortgage rates.

More troubling are the current statistics provided by Zillow.com. There were 86 Culver homes for sale at the start of this week, Zillow reported, but dozens of them were either in foreclosure or in pre-foreclosure proceedings.

Real estate economists blame the slow but steady rise of foreclosure and pre-foreclosure offerings across the nation on a variety of factors. Some buyers in the last one or two years have over-extended their borrowing power, experts say, to purchase a house before prices could move even higher. Others have seen their original monthly housing bills rise sharply because payments on their adjustable-rate mortgage, or ARM, have moved higher in lock-step with this year’s climbing interest rates.

Zillow reports that one of the most luxurious and expensive local homes for sale this week is a five-bedroom, three-bath English Tudor-style house at 10738 Molony Road in the exclusive Culver Crest community. It’s listed for nearly $3 million.

One of the least-expensive properties that are not in the foreclosure process is a one-bedroom, one-bath condo at 4802 Hollow Corner Road that’s listed for $459,000, Zillow reports.