"After a brief pause immediately following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the residential real estate market in California showed surprising resiliency," said the association's president, Robert Bailey. "Even with the dot-com slowdown in Silicon Valley, California has been less affected by the economic slowdown, compared to the nation as a whole. Home prices continued to rebound in the San Francisco Bay Area, sales were strong in Southern California and home prices trended upward in many Central Valley communities."

The association's midyear forecast for 2002 predicts that the median price of a single-family home in California will rise 18 percent to a record $313,000 this year, compared to 2001. Sales will post an 8.5 percent gain to a record 547,300 units in 2002, compared to last year, according to the forecast. The previous record was set in 1999, when sales were at 537,830.

"We haven't seen a year-to-year median price increase at this rate since 1988, when the median price of a home increased 18.4 percent, to $168,200," Bailey said.

Unemployment will continue to rise this year, while job growth will be flat at 0.2 percent, according to the report. California's population is projected to increase 1.5 percent this year.

"Unprecedented demand for housing, historically low mortgage interest rates and continued volatility in the stock market continue to propel the housing market," said Leslie Appleton-Young, the association's vice president and chief economist. "The rate of home-price appreciation is well above the rate of inflation, making homeownership a safe haven in a period of overall economic uncertainty. The residential housing market will continue to experience double-digit price increases in many regions of the state for the remainder of the year."

Appleton-Young will present the California Association of Realtors' 2003 Housing Market Forecast for the residential real estate market in early October.

Also in the year since the terrorist attacks, California Realtors were generous donors to the Realtors Housing Relief Fund, the first relief fund by a national association to help victims of the Sept. 11 tragedy. The goal of the fund was to make certain that families of victims, who already had suffered a tremendous loss, would not have to endure the pain of losing their homes as well. California Realtors donated nearly $825,000 to the $8.3 million fund, more than any other state real estate association, which helped 1,303 families nationwide, including three families in California.