Bargain-hunters continued to swarm Riverside County in November as banks slashed prices of foreclosed homes to their lowest levels since 2002, a real estate research service reported Tuesday.

Homes sold last month for a median $220,000, barely half of their peak in December 2006, according to MDA DataQuick. About 3,720 escrows closed in November; sales volumes have been about 50 percent above year-ago levels since June, helping real estate agents out of an 18-month funk.

Agents in Southwest County have been particularly busy. Homes have been selling at about double last year's rate all year. Existing single-family homes in the area sold for an average $264,000 in November, according to an analysis by The Californian.

The sinking prices are a boon for people like Dave Mazza, who had been pining to return to California ever since he left in 2006. Mazza, who is semiretired, said his $125,000 gain on the sale of his Sacramento home went a long way in the San Antonio real estate market, but he knew almost immediately that he wanted to move back.

Mazza had lived in San Diego in the late 1990s, so he began looking for houses in the region once prices fell back below $250,000, he said. In late November, he closed escrow on a $200,000 house in Murrieta.

"I said, 'Now is the opportunity to come back and afford a home'," Mazza said.

Real estate agent Robert Stabile said the opportunity was similar for his client, a single woman who teaches at a local school, who paid $224,000 for a three-bedroom on nearby Pepperleaf Street.

Mazza, Stabile's client and most other new homeowners this year are buying from lenders who are taking huge losses on the homes.

Mazza's home off Jackson Avenue in Murrieta previously sold for $373,000, according to records from a title company. The exact terms of that mortgage are not publicly available, but title records show that the owner refinanced her mortgage in September 2006, borrowing $222,000 from First Franklin, a San Jose-based subprime lender.

First Franklin's parent company, Merrill Lynch, was rushed into a merger with Bank of America amid worries that it might otherwise fall victim to Wall Street's implosion in September.

Lenders have been seizing homes from delinquent mortgage borrowers at a record rate since 2006. Tens of thousands of local buyers in 2004 and 2005 relied on adjustable-rate mortgages and down payments of 5 percent or less.

Buyers frequently assumed that rising home values would allow them to refinance into safer, fixed-rate mortgages a couple of years later, but the flow of easy credit dried up in 2005 and 2006, and many buyers found themselves unable to keep up when mortgage obligations shot up from initially low levels.

Foreclosure numbers have fallen somewhat in recent months, though analysts have said that state and federal laws are merely slowing the process temporarily. Gene Foley, a local real estate agent who represents one large lender, said he expects a flood of bank-owned homes to hit the market in January.

Stabile said the foreclosure flood has forced him to change his focus as an agent. He represented mostly sellers until last year. Since then, most sellers have been lenders who sign on limited numbers of agents, who each list dozens of homes at once.

Contact staff writer Chris Bagley at (760) 740-5444 or cbagley@nctimes.com. Bagley blogs about local economic trends at http://bizblogs.nctimes.com.