A bit of good housing news

Sellers, real estate agents and mortgage loan officers, you finally have a tiny slice of good housing news to celebrate.

The National Association of Realtors released their latest housing statistics earlier this week. And for the first time in a long time, the number of home sales actually rose.

Existing-home sales – including single-family, townhouses, condominiums and co-ops – rose 2.9 percent from January to February. At that pace, agents would sell about 5.03 million units in 2008. That’s up from a pace of 4.89 million units in January.

Of course, this still being the midst of our nation’s severe housing slump, you can’t get too excited: Those figures are still 23.8 percent below the 6.60-million-unit level of February of 2007.

Also, while homes sold a bit quicker, they didn’t sell for as much money as their sellers had probably hoped. The national median existing-home price for all housing types was $195,900 in February, down 8.2 percent from a year earlier when the median was $213,500.

What to make of these stats? There is some hope here, and real estate professionals are hoping that March and April, typically stronger home-selling months, will be even stronger. But the fact that sales are still down from 2007, added to the news that sales prices are continuing to fall, proves that this real estate slump is actually a real estate adjustment.

During the real estate boom, housing prices rose too high too quickly. We are now in the middle of a painful adjustment period, when housing prices are falling to more realistic levels.

It’s inevitable, and necessary. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s any less painful.