Are real estate prices going up or down?

You would think that with the market as soft as it is in many sections of the nation prices would be heading south. And they are. At least that's what you keep reading in the media. And then two separate home price reports are released in the same week and all of a sudden the story gets real blurry.

Here is why. First Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller national home price index comes out telling us that values dropped 3.2% in the second quarter of 2007 from the same time a year ago. That goes along with common belief. The news immediately hiked the angst factor on Wall Street, confirming the fears of some experts that the housing sector was in more trouble than previously thought. To read the entire article, please click on the link in this paragraph.