If you put great stock in average home prices, you probably think August was a good month for Baltimore County sellers and a dreadful one for those in Baltimore City.

The average price jumped almost 6 percent in the county compared with a year earlier and plummeted 25 percent -- from $180,000 to $135,000 -- in the city, according to sales figures from Metropolitan Regional Information Systems.

Of course, you probably don't put great stock in average prices if you're a regular here. We've chatted before about the apples-to-oranges problem that average (and median) presents when you're comparing the homes that sold this year to the potentially very different ones that sold last year.

Average prices have been pulled down in the city by high levels of investors buying lower-priced foreclosures, thus the big drop. (The median price fell even farther in August -- 44 percent.)

Suburban communities not seeing that trend have a different sort of skew factor at work: A lot of first-time buyers were purchasing starter homes a year ago, but odds are pretty good that their numbers slumped after June, which had been the deadline to close on a deal and qualify for the first-time homebuyer tax credit. (It's been extended to Sept. 30, but everyone who could close by June did.)

Just something to think about.

On another price note: Cindy Ariosa, who manages the Baltimore and southern Pennsylvania region for Long & Foster, says one of her agents represented a buyer who closed on a $6-million-dollar home in Baltimore County last week. Far afield from a starter place.

You can read the August home sale story here.