The numbers come from the Standard & Poor’s Case Shiller Home Price Index. They show that home prices in the Chicago area in September rose from August – and that was a fifth month in a row. Prices are still about 11 percent lower than September last year. Maureen Maitland of Standard & Poor’s says trying to time the bottom of the market is tough.

MAITLAND: We have high unemployment rates but at the same time we have tax incentives, so there’s all these different variables going on with the housing market and I think for the most part, people don’t know whether we’re exactly at the bottom yet, close to the bottom, beginning to turn up and it will depend from region to region.

Maitland says one concern is the number of foreclosures that still haven’t come on the market. As banks start to list those properties, prices could fall again.