Obviously the past few years have been rough on the real estate market, whether your looking to buy, sell, or refinance, there is nothing easy in the game right now. Buyers are looking to get homes at a greatly reduced price from sellers who are seriously underwater in their mortgages, but, the buyers often cannot get a mortgage or home loan started without perfect credit. Owners looking to refinance and seriously struggling to get their mortgage companies to do anything, let alone send out an appraiser and get the home correctly valued and your loan refinanced. There has been a new federal report issued on overall home prices throughout the country as of last year. Which is a decent indicator that we have for examining future home price fluctuations. We know that the housing market has not taken any big leaps upward or is really showing a lot of push for revival, but there are a few good points to look at that are positive.

• The value of an O.C. single-family home increased 0.18% in the fourth quarter of 2010 from the same quarter in 2009.
• It was the third straight gain in house prices here after 13 straight quarters (Q1 2007 through Q1 2010) of declining house values.
• O.C. had the 75th best house price appreciation out of 309 U.S. metro areas ranked in the survey.

So there are the positives in the report, really doesn't mean much when you are comparing it to homes that are worth a fraction of an average Orange County property. But nonetheless, it "is" positive.

• Last quarter's performance was the first in two years to be worse than the previous quarter.
• From the third quarter of 2008 through the first quarter of 2010, price drops grew continuously smaller. And then in the second and third quarters of last year, appreciation increased by larger and larger amounts — by 1.7% in the second quarter and by 2.8% in the third quarter.
• O.C. house values actually decreased by 0.5% from the third quarter to the fourth.
• Overall, O.C. house values are down 24.7% from five years ago.

Those are the follow-up statistics that may inspire you to throw your computer out the window and run in circles screaming. So let's take it for what it is and examine the market for future changes. So far my outlook is still that 2011 will be a "stability" year and let's hope that we find our footing and start pushing our economy upwards through 2012 and on.