New home sales stayed flat in August, a modest miss from expectations. Still, new home sales are on track for a 16% increase year-over-year. This still puts annual sales at the third-lowest on record, but it’s a boost from the bottomed-out years of 2010 and 2011. The recovery is sluggish, but it’s moving in an upward direction.

More analysts are excited about the continued increase in home prices, designated by the Case-Shiller index released yesterday. They particularly point to prices at the low end:

The housing market is headed on a dangerous path. I’ll have more on this in the coming days, but if you think that an investor-heavy market of house-flippers, with little recourse for those underwater but to sit tight and hope, and a nation of absentee slumlords redlining neighborhoods is something healthy, well you’re in luck, because that’s what we’re getting.

The housing recovery narrative got a boost today from the Case-Shiller price index, which went positive year-over-year for the first time since a first-time homebuyer’s tax credit goosed the numbers in 2010. So really, this is the first year-over-year increase since the housing bubble collapsed in 2007 2006. And the usual suspects are ecstatic, but there are still troubling signs the market is not yet healthy.

The “housing is back” narrative got another boost with a story in the Wall Street Journal that simultaneously makes an unequivocal statement about home prices, and then acknowledges wild variance in the data set.