Like politics, real estate markets are local.  By that I mean that most of us are affected by what is happening in our local community not what is happening on the national level.  However, it is always prudent to keep an eye on the “big picture.”  To that end the recent news about housing starts and home resales in February should be .  Both numbers as reported by the Wall Street Journal were up for the month. 

The home resale annual rate number rose 2.9% to 5.03 million.  Up from 4.89 million annual rate in January and the first increase since last July.  Why?  One big reason could be that in the same month median price was down more than 8.2%.  Last February the median price was $213,500 vs. this February’s median price of $195,900.