Year-over-year home prices in Pierce County continued to fall in April as sales activity also dropped at the start of the typically hot spring selling season.

The median price of a home, including stand-alone houses and condominiums, was $263,051 last month, a 4.3 percent drop from the same month in 2007, according to numbers released Monday by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. It’s the seventh year-over-year price drop in the last eight months. Median means half of all homes sell for more and half for less.

Sales, meanwhile, fell 18.9 percent.

Spring did start slowly, said Coldwell Banker Bain agent Margo Hass Klein. But she said traffic in the last couple of weeks has increased by at least 10 percent at open houses.

Buyers, however, continue to try to time the market by watching houses they like and hoping for price reductions, said Hass Klein, a practice she recommends against.

“I tell buyers, if you like it, what is $10,000 going to mean in a purchase price? If it’s that important, go ahead and wait and chance losing it,” she said.

Though declining, home prices here are not falling at nearly the pace seen in many other parts of the country, where double-digit decreases are common.

Looked at another way, Pierce County prices peaked in August at $285,000 but have stabilized since the New Year, hovering around $260,000, according to MLS numbers.

“We’ve had 10 months to adjust to this new normal, and the market is moving back to a new normalcy,” said Re/Max agent George Pilant.

April’s price and sales numbers, Pilant said, came in better than he expected, particularly considering last month’s unusual winterlike weather.

“Spring was late coming this year,” said Pilant, who’s also a member of the state Real Estate Commission. “It’s hard during an open house to look out the window and see snow.”

Michael Handy, a broker/branch manager at a Windermere office, predicted price increases will make a comeback in 2008 as buyers see that today’s market helps them get what they want for less.

“I think we won’t see huge increases, I think we’ll see incremental increases,” he said.

Elsewhere in the Puget Sound area, Kitsap and Thurston counties’ year-over-year home prices in April declined 5.7 percent and 1.8 percent, respectively. King County prices were essentially flat, with an increase of 0.67 percent.

Around Pierce County, some areas fared better than others in April.

 • Year-over-year sales fell by more than half in Central Tacoma with Southeast Tacoma and Gig Harbor right behind at a decline of more than 48 percent each. The DuPont area saw the biggest hike in sales activity – a jump of 72.4 percent in closed sales.

 • Prices increased in several areas: Lake Tapps/Bonney Lake, Roy, Central Tacoma, University Place, Fife, Browns Point and Anderson Island, though the island had just two sales in April.

 • Every area but one in the county had more homes listed for sale in April compared to the same month in 2007. But the pace of new listings slowed. Spanaway took the distinction of the only area with fewer listings overall, a 23.1 percent decline. But Puyallup came close, at only 0.04 percent more homes listed.

Devona Wells: 253-597-8652