For real estate brokers and home builders, the fall of 2005 was among the best of times. Sales of existing homes and new construction were at record highs and the inventory of unsold homes was the lowest in at least two years.

This spring, it's a starkly different market. New construction has declined for two quarters, resales have flattened, and the backlog of unsold homes is up 13 percent in a year.

But for homeowners, the most important number -- the rate of appreciation in the value of their houses -- has held steady as the market went from potent to peaked.

According to government figures released last week, the appreciation rate for homes in the Raleigh-Cary metropolitan statistical area was an annualized 6.42 percent in the first quarter of 2007. Homes in Durham had a 7.07 percent appreciation rate, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight reported.

Eighteen months ago, the rate was 5.11 percent in Raleigh-Cary and in Durham, 5.61 percent.

Nationally, homes appreciated at a 4.25 percent annual rate in the first quarter, a dramatic decline from the 12.6 percent pace of a year earlier.

Home values in many parts of the country plummeted after speculators drove prices sky-high, leaving markets glutted with overpriced homes when demand didn't measure up.

But Triangle homeowners, who largely didn't benefit from the nation's housing boom, also have not suffered in the bust. As a noncoastal, second-tier market, the region was overlooked by speculators. Lots of affordable land for new subdivisions enabled builders to keep up with surging job growth.

It's a formula that hasn't changed significantly, although demand has been crimped by transplants unable to sell their homes in other regions. Last year, a record 36,000 jobs were created in the Triangle, and this year, economists expect 30,000 more.

"Demand is a big component of what happens" to values, said Andrew Leventis, the oversight office's senior economist. "It's slowed down in most areas, although your area seems to be holding its own, or little better, compared to the rest."

Joel Naroff, an economist in Holland, Pa., also sees positive signs. "Compared to so many places, it's actually a very, very good performance," he said. "The rate of growth is slow, but unless job growth goes down and the economy tanks, you won't be looking at negative numbers."

Hard to figure

Home appreciation is one of the most difficult economic indicators to calculate.

The price of a home can be vastly different from that of a similar property a few blocks away. The timing of a sale and the unique characteristics of comparable homes can add up to big differences in appreciation.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight uses a computer model that tracks average price changes in repeat sales and refinancings of the same single-family properties. The agency uses data from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which form the nation's largest database of conventional mortgage transactions. The data include 32 million repeat transactions over 32 years.

"In a perfect world, you could look at average sales increases, but unfortunately, every home doesn't sell in every period, so you have to control for the ones that didn't sell," Leventis said. "You've got to adjust for the mix of houses that sell, so a random spike in sales of a certain type don't randomly affect measured appreciation rates."

Leventis said he consulted 10 real estate brokers before putting his home up for sale in Washington, D.C., recently. He found that they all disagreed.

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