However, housing markets differ greatly both across regions and within metropolitan areas, and the positive signs in the aggregate data do not apply to all neighborhoods equally.
For example, even within those metropolitan areas that have experienced rising average prices  1  In the two years after the end of the most recent recession (Q2:2009), existing home sales rose only 4 percent, house prices fell by 4 percent, according to the CoreLogic price index, and residential investment averaged only 2–1/2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) – half of the average GDP between 1949 and 2006.