Today's Daily News Record is correct -- in more ways that one.   The housing market has indeed contracted (verb) as home sales and prices have declined in recent months.  However, further analysis of the current market reveals that Housing CONTRACTS (noun) are the more exciting part of this storyline.

It was Carey Keyes that made the exciting discovery today....last June 54 contracts were written during the entire month.  But in the first 14 days of this June, there have already been 51 contracts!

If we project out until the end of June, here's how last June and this June would compare....



OK, OK, I realize this is extrapolating from June 1 - 14 data....so for those of you who only want to deal with actual data (not projections), let's look at the total number of contracts written thus far this year (Jan 1 - June 14) as compared to last year during the same time period).....



So, it turns out that there might still be hope for 2011 to be the year that the housing market stabilized in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County.