Yesterday, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight released its fourth-quarter housing data. 

The OFHEO report color-coded each state according to its annual price changes.  The states shown in red lost value, and everyone else gained.  Overall, the OFHEO measured a 0.8% national increase.

Also hitting the wires yesterday was the Case-Shiller Home Price Index. 

This report focuses on the 20 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the United States and painted a much more grim outlook for housing.  According to Case-Shiller, prices declined 8.9% nationally.

Both reports are imperfect but one notable difference is that the OFHEO report measures all 291 MSAs in the United States and its data showed that two-thirds of them appreciated last year.

Once again, this just reminds us: real estate is a local phenomenon.  Every market is unique with its own price trends, independent from the rest of the country.