The nationwide numbers out today show that, year over year, home prices continue to decline. That decline was over 18% nationally. Because everyone hears national numbers, rather than local, the tendency is to assume that whatever you're hearing is also the situation locally.

Year over year, our numbers look worse than the national average. The latest numbers available from the local multiple listing service show year over year price declines between 23-32%. But that's only one piece of the picture.

If you're buying a foreclosed home or possibly even a short sale, you may not feel the pricing power you were led to believe you'd have. You see, all the buyers are looking in the same price range. So, even if there are 25% fewer buyers than there were a couple of years ago, if they're all looking at properties, say, on the western end of Prince William County under $350K there is little or no buyer leverage.

So, the pricing picture is considerably more complicated than what you hear in the national press. I'm not blaming them. You can't write a coherent article about prices everywhere! Just be aware that the picture here is a little more nuanced.

The other piece of information in the home price report was that prices nationwide are now at 2002 levels. I suspect we're not quite that low yet. But I haven't yet had an opportunity to do an analysis. I am seeing people who've been in their homes five years or more still under water.

And, if you're wondering when we bounce back up, this Bloomberg article wasn't particularly optimistic:

 “There are very few V-shaped recoveries in the history of real estate, and this one is likely to be even slower because of the size of the bubble,” said Robert Shiller, the Yale University professor who, with economist Karl Case, created home price indexes in the 1980s now used by Standard & Poor’s.

In short, don't expect any rebound in prices soon. I believe from a price perspective we'll bounce along the bottom for quite some time, perhaps a couple of years before we begin very slow appreciation.

If you're looking for a ray of sunshine, one analyst on CNBC suggested yesterday that we could fix the housing problem any time we wanted by increasing the number of immigrants.

Prince William county continues on its headlong pace towards a seller's market. There's now only a four month supply of inventory in Prince William county. And, that's not because there's no inventory coming on the market. 1116 new listings were added last month. Meanwhile, 1200 went under contract. We are seeing many fewer new listings added than a year ago at this time. 1631 new listings were added in March of 2008. Meanwhile, closed sales were at 750 in March of 2009 compared to 502 a year ago. Meanwhile, the average sold price crept up from last month's $204K to $210K this month.

I'm not expecting big leaps in pricing in Prince William county. But given the short supply and the increasing demand I think we'll likely continue to see small gains in prices throughout the spring/summer season.

I'm thrilled at the progress we're making in Culpeper. We're down to 8 months of inventory there. Last year at this time there were over 800 homes for sale. This month there are only 464. Last year in March we sold 42 homes, this year 58. There is a March jump in new listings in Culpeper and the other counties, but nothing like the jump we've seen in recent years. And, as long as the net result is still declining inventory, the indicators seem pointed in the right direction.

Prices are still falling in Culpeper County, but I predict we'll see some stabilization by the end of the season. There are already signs of that in the bidding wars on properties priced under $300K.

Fauquier is moving in the right direction, but more slowly than Culpeper or Prince William. We've still got almost 13 months of inventory in Fauquier County. As in the other counties, the lower priced tier of homes is moving pretty quickly. But there's an awful lot of inventory above $350K that's just sitting. There are fewer foreclosures in Fauquier and, in some sense, that's hurting the market. Many of the buyers out there are bargain hunters. And, the bargains are harder to find in Fauquier County.

Still, the inventory is down to 556 as compared to 734 at this time last year. But unlike Culpeper and Prince William County, Fauquier's inventory actually rose this month compared to last month. That's not unusual for March, but is unusual compared to what's going on around us. Last March 35 homes sold in Fauquier County. This year in March it was 43. Again, we're headed in the right direction, but slowly.

Prices are still falling in Fauquier. The average sales price is $224K now as opposed to $318K a year ago. Fauquier is the hardest county to make a case for price stabilization this year. I don't anticipate stabilization in prices until we get a lot closer to six months of inventory. We may hit that level if we have an extraordinary spring/summer season. For now, my bet is that Fauquier prices remain the most likely to continue to fall.

Rappahannock County shows inventory rising slightly (76 compared to 71 a year ago). New listings were 17 in March of this year compared to 11 a year ago. There was 1 new contract in March and 3 closed sales. Those are typical Rappahannock numbers. This is the county that tends to be more sheltered from the real estate trends in the rest of the area. Prices do seem to still be falling in Rappahannock, although it's hard to identify by looking at the overall trends. And, Rappahannock residents continue to take their properties off the market rather than suffer the loss in value.

It's not only the Days on Market and number of offers and volume of sales that are improving in Prince William. I'm also seeing some strength in pricing there.

The sale price as a percentage of list price has risen year over year from 87.64% to 90.97%. While it's true that much of this strength is in the lower price ranges, the fact remains that inventory is selling and prices are firming up. And, in the under $350K inventory, the pricing strength is even more apparent with very little selling much below asking price.

And since we're still not seeing the typical early spring flood of new inventory, prices, so far, seem likely to continue strong.

There's some indication of firming of prices in Fauquier, although it's too small to assume there's anything in the way of a trend here yet.

And Culpeper prices remain soft at best, probably still declining.

The question continues to be whether higher prices and lower inventory in Prince William and east will push people further out as the peak sales season approaches.

CBS news makes it official. Manassas is the hot place in the region for getting a real estate bargain!

And, no wonder! There are currently 324 properties for sale in Prince William county for less than $100,000. That's incredible when you consider the prices just a few years ago.

And, while the rental market has softened as the economy has softened and the inventory has risen, it hasn't softened so much that you can't make a profit at those prices!

For those who say housing prices have to fall alot further this year, I'd say, not in Prince William! Obviously I'd be an idiot to declare a bottom, especially with so many economic difficulties still ahead. But if this isn't a bottom in Prince William, we're awfully close!

And, in general, I see some firming up of prices in this area. Note I did not say I see any appreciation. And I don't expect any this year. But it seems like some kind of bottom is in the process of being established. Depending on what happens with the rest of the economy it may or may not hold. But for now, there is reason for optimism.

This is the story of a house in old town Warrenton. It's in the historic district and is a beautiful house set on a quarter acre lot.

The house has beautiful hardwood floors and an updated kitchen. It has three bedrooms and 1.5 baths. It was built in 1939 and is within walking distance of old town.

This house was sold in 2003 for $165,000. It was sold again in August of 2006 for $353,999. The owner who bought it at that time eventually lost the home to foreclosure.

In April of 2008 the bank listed it for $369,900. It's hard to know what they were thinking, but clearly they didn't have a clue what had happened in the local real estate market. No improvements had been made to the home since the last sale.

Not surprisingly, the house didn't sell at that price. They eventually lowered the price to $319,900 before withdrawing it and listing it with another real estate agent. In September it was listed with the new agent, still at $319,900. Eventually the price was lowered to $249,900.

It finally sold last month for $137,800, roughly 16% below what it sold for six years ago.

This is a house that was not trashed by the last owners. It was in as good a condition when they left as when they bought it.

That sales price is 61% below what it sold for in 2006.

The lessons here:

There are some incredible deals out there.

• Banks lose big time when they over price foreclosures.
• 61% price drop in 2.5 years is astonishing.
• Don't be afraid to make a lowball offer to a bank. Sure, most of the time you won't get it. But, it does happen.

No one can tell you for sure what will happen with prices this year. But to compete with this kind of deal, most sellers will have to cut prices much more than they have thus far.

I read a piece in Seeking Alpha this weekend about the inventory situation in the real estate market.  The author's theory is that the improvement we've seen in inventory levels in the last few months is an illusion. And, he gives formulas for computing what the current inventory really is.

His thinking is that the people who pulled their homes off the market, really still do want to sell. In addition, there are many people who have not put their homes up for sale, but would like to sell. His conclusion is that prices will continue to fall for much longer than most people are anticipating because of the huge amount of unseen inventory.

He makes some good points. Certainly there is some unseen inventory out there. There are a substantial number of people just waiting for the market to "turn around" and then they'll list their homes for sale.

But I think he overestimates the size of that universe. Some of the people who have decided not to see in this market will give up the idea all together. Some of them didn't have a pressing reason to sell in the first place. They'll make improvements to the home they are in and stay another five years.

Some people wanted to sell their homes because they had attractive job offers elsewhere. But, in light of the current market, they passed up those job offers.

There's a growing number of owners who have rented out their homes rather than sell them and take a big loss.  Some of those owners will decide they like being landlords and will hold onto that asset. Others will at least hold onto the house as long as they've got good tenants and they can continue to pay their mortgage.

As with so many things, none of us know what the real inventory number is. But the blog post did get it right that the number is higher than what you'll see in October's report due out this week.

I always enjoy hearing Robert Toll, CEO of Toll Brothers, on his quarterly conference calls. He's always refreshingly honest and will undoubtedly make me laugh out loud at some point during the call. And the one this week was no exception.

"With respect to traffic, it’s still dismal. Traffic is -- it’s consistent, however. It has not gotten any worse for the last three quarters, so we feel as though we’ve stabilized but I don’t want to give you the indication that that makes us feel good. It’s as though we walked into the tar pits, sunk up to our nose, our feet are touching a ledge and we are not going down any further but that sure doesn’t make us feel that comfortable...But we are heartened that at least we are able to spook up the traffic. That indicates that there are buyers out there waiting to be nudged. It will take a general turn in confidence for the big nudge to occur but sooner or later, it will occur."

 He's hit the nail on the head as far as traffic goes. Here's a chart that illustrates this at a local level for Prince William County:

There is still a huge gap between where inventory is and the number of sales. And this is after a huge jump in sales in Prince William recently. If you look at nearby counties the discrepancy is often even more jarring.

Unfortunately, there aren't any charts that give us foot traffic statistics. But this clearly illustrates the dilemna for the market. Excess supply in a free market economy inevitably pushes down prices. As long as this gap is as large as it is currently, there's no sign of a bottom from a price perspective.

It's a good thing Robert Toll has a good sense of humor!

There are a lot of sellers sitting out there wondering whether to try and sell now or to hold off, at least until spring, in the hopes of seeing a better market then.

There's some data to suggest you might as well bite the bullet and do it now. The S&P/Case-Shiller index of home prices shows that the last real estate downturn, in the late 80s and early 90s, it took about seven years for the market to recover enough the prices began to rise again.

We're only a couple of years into this one. And, this downturn may play out differently. There are certainly plenty of interested parties, especially in an election year, who would like there to be some good news on the real estate front. But it seems unlikely that two years or maybe even three will be enough to move us back to rising prices given the amount of inventory out there.

And, you'll see an increase in the number of homes selling, I suspect, long before you see that begin to push up the prices of those homes.

So, if you're wondering whether to put your house on the market now or wait for the spring market the answer is that it probably makes very little difference in terms of the price you'll get for your home. What you should consider is that, as in most years, I expect the inventory to jump tremendously in the spring and the competition for the buyers will be much fiercer.

Maybe the real question is how will your home fare against the increased competition?