Amador County - October marked a decline in foreclosure filings for the first time in two years, but it’s still too early to speculate whether this is the beginning of the end. A number of foreclosure and statistical tracking services have been watching the market closely. They’ve monitored a steep decline in the number of housing auctions and notices of default, the formal warnings issued when borrowers fall behind on their payments. “Trustees deeds in Sacramento, statewide, everywhere, are trending down from September to October. It's a meaningful decline,” said DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage. Statewide, 275,000 households have foreclosed since January of 2007. Sean O'Toole, CEO of ForeclosureRadar, said there was a 39 percent drop in the number of California homes auctioned from September to October. There were 14,042 auctions in October, compared with 23,049 in September, he said. Nationally, there was a in home repossessions compared to September. All this indicates that the nation’s foreclosure free fall may be subsiding. From January through October of 2008, there have been 33,961 sales of new and existing homes in Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties, according to MDA DataQuick. October marked the first month since April of 2002 that median home prices for new and existing homes combined dropped below 200,000 dollars in the Sacramento region, according to Dataquick. Amador County’s median home prices dropped to 250,000, down 27.5 percent from the same month in 2007. Prices have fallen 41.2 percent from a May high of 425,000 dollars. Story by Alex Lane (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).