If you are considering a home improvement, don't wait for warm weather to schedule the work.

The housing market is producing incentives to complete home improvements, but by the time spring rolls around, it could be tough to find a professional home improvement contractor with an opening.

Total existing-home sales -- single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops -- declined 5.2 percent in January compared to the same month a year ago. Meanwhile, the national median existing-home price for all housing types was $211,000 in January, up 11.6 percent from January 2005 when the median was $189,000, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The price increase isn't anything new.

Home prices have been rising steadily nationwide for years, more than 55 percent nationwide in the last five years alone. About a dozen and a half states have enjoyed even greater levels of home price appreciation, according to Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's Home Price Index.

Even as the rate of increases slowed from 14 percent to 12 percent in the third quarter last year, buyers had just about had it with double-digit home price inflation.

Too much home price inflation gives buyers vertigo, forcing them to get on the fence until the world stops spinning.

Sellers, on the other hand, tangle with inertia. The momentum of skyrocketing home prices -- much of it in the past several years -- makes it tough for sellers to come back down to earth and price homes reflecting the changing market.

Chances are, high housing cost conditions in many regions won't get any easier in the spring, traditionally the big selling season. This year, the last vestiges of the sellers' markets will be out in force trying to squeeze out what's left of a housing bubble that did everything but pop.

Interest rates, already on the rise, are expected to add to the prohibitively-high cost of housing that's still rising or offset any minimal price declines.

The housing market does indeed appear to be shifting from a sellers' market to a buyers' market in many areas, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's time to buy.

For those who already own a home, fixing up instead of moving up can be a better option.

"The red hot real estate market has been the object of most peoples attention in recent years, but as home resales start to cool off, remodeling will likely become the next real estate big thing," says Bruce Hahn, president of the American Homeowners Foundation.

The foundation says Harvard's Joint Center For Housing Studies' forecast for a 4 percent growth in home improvements is off the mark.

"We believe a number of factors may push the figure considerably higher, perhaps to 8 percent this year," said Hahn.

Here's why.

• You can't afford to move. Add up the commissions, the costs to prepare your home for market and other costs associated with selling your home. Combine the costs to buy a new home -- a new mortgage, closing costs, moving costs, and others -- unless you plan to tear down your old home and rebuild it from the foundation up, improving is typically cheaper than moving.

• Your home can afford the work. For most home owners who purchased a home two, three or four years ago your home likely has enough equity to tap for a major improvement, say a room addition or even a second story to give you the added space you might seek in a move-up home. Plowing equity back into your home and, chances are, over time, you'll reap a return (in increased home value) that's greater than the cost of the loan.

  "If you were lucky enough to buy or refinance your home in the last few years you probably have the best mortgage rate you're likely to see for a long time. Why move and give up that sweet mortgage rate if you have cash from your last home or can affordably finance the much smaller cost of a remodeling job with a home equity loan?" asked Hahn.

• It's time to feather your nest. If you are like 83 percent of home owners aged 45 and older, according to AARP (formerly known as the American Association of Retired People), you would like to retire in place and remain in your current home.

  Unfortunately you may be more prepared for retirement than your home. Long time home owners who live in older homes, live in homes that are in greater need of maintenance and modifications that help keep older homeowners more comfortable and in many cases, safer.

  "With medical advances enabling more seniors to live in their homes longer, a growing focus of remodeling will be on senior mobility issues," said Hahn.

  Along with baby boomers preparing their homes to retire in place, young families expecting their first child, or maturing families sending kids to school all experience a change of life that warrants reconfiguring the home to fit a new lifestyle.

• The worst can happen. Bulking up your home with hurricane and tornado resistance, earthquake retro fits, fire resistant designs and materials and flood control measures build in emergency preparedness that help ensure your survivability when Mother Nature unleashes her fury.

• You'll get some money back. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 will pay you in the form of tax credits for performing certain energy efficient home improvements. You'll have to act fast because the current provisions only allow the credits for 2006 and 2007.

The total tax credit you can earn over the two year period, $500, is available for upgrading heating and air conditioning systems, insulations, windows, doors and thermostats, caulking leaks, installing pigmented metal roofs and for otherwise putting the bite on energy waste in your home. Two more federal provisions will give you a tax credit of $2,000 for solar panels and a tax credit of $2,000 for solar water heating equipment, provided the systems are not used to heat a pool or hot tub.

Some states, utility companies and other entities also offer rebates, credits and other financial incentives for even minor improvements that boost the energy efficiency of your home.

Those upgrades can also be solid selling points as the market swings and your home becomes more difficult to sell.

"With the costs of home heating and cooling skyrocketing, AHF predicts that many homeowners will want to take advantage of those tax incentives, and many of those remodeling projects will no doubt incorporate quality of life improvements," said Hahn.