You've heard the news that pending sales are up across the country over 7 percent from July to August. While that's the broad brush news, when looking at the details, one sees just how many states in the West are experiencing a huge surge in the number of sales being registered on real estate boards across the region.

Following the trends over the last two quarters, it should be no surprise that the real estate market across the country is slowly beginning to show signs of life. The National Association of Realtors, keeper of national realty sales data, has been releasing the numbers all year of state after state experiencing very healthy sales increases from the 1st quarter to the 2nd quarter.

Leading the way is Idaho, with a 51 percent jump between the two quarters. California was up 25.8 percent followed closely by Nevada at 25 percent. The fourth strongest statewide market was Arizona, up by 20.5 percent.

The only two states to show a quarter over quarter increase from 2nd quarter 2007 to 2nd quarter 2008 was California, up 3.7% and Nevada surging forward at 18 percent.

When news hit about this latest sales increase of 7.4 percent, hidden, again, in the fine print was the fact that sales year over year in the west had jumped a whopping 37 percent. The challenge facing markets now, of course, is the current credit crisis, which will determine if the trends of upward bound sales will continue.

Published: October 17, 2008

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