LOS ANGELES — California home sales plummeted nearly 35 percent in August and signs point to sales and prices falling even further as nervous buyers avoid the market and owners struggle with rising rates on adjustable mortgages, analysts said yesterday.

Statewide home sales dropped to their lowest level for August in 15 years, with a total of 33,429 houses and condos sold last month, DataQuick Information Systems said.

That represented a drop of 34.5 percent from August 2006, when 51,054 houses and condos were sold.

The median price paid for a California home in August was $465,000, down about 2.7 percent from the year-ago period.

Home prices climbed in some heavily populated counties, such as Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, mainly because the wealthy continue to buy more expensive homes, DataQuick said.

That's not so in more affordable areas of the state.

"Homes in the Central Valley in particular are declining in value faster than they are in the metro areas," DataQuick analyst John Karevoll said.

Most analysts believe the housing crunch will get worse before the market starts to recover. Analysts said a variety of factors, including whether the general economy dips into a recession, make it difficult to predict when the market will hit bottom.

The collapse of several subprime lenders and tighter lending practices are contributing to the slowdown.