L.A. home prices keep going up

Weren't prices supposed to be falling this year? So far, they're increasing. The latest February numbers from DataQuick show that the median price of all homes sold in L.A. County was $528,000, up 7.8 percent from a year earlier. Sales, meanwhile, fell 11 percent - the slowest February since 1997. But that percentage drop is an improvement over the 20 percent-plus monthly declines seen throughout much of 2006. Anyway, keep in mind that February is always a slow month, so the numbers might not reflect what will happen in the spring, when the market typically picks up. LAT