Home sales in the county fell 31 percent last month

Anne Arundel County home sales dropped 31 percent last month, as owners continued to cut prices in a softening real estate market, area real estate agents and analysts said this morning.

But that's the bad news. The good news is that even though the median price of a home sold in June was more than $9,000 less than the previous month, things are much worse elsewhere in Maryland and around the country.

The median price for a county home was $351,750, a 5 percent jump from June 2005, according to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc., a Rockville-based listing service. That compares to an 18 percent average growth rate...