The first sign of a housing recovery is an increase in the number of sales, which in turn begins to decrease inventory.  The belief is that the areas hardest hit (California, Florida, Arizona) will be the first to start showing signs of recovery.  Here is a great article talking about California Real Estate.

In doing so we see, California home sales were up 83% from the previous year. 

The state’s unsold inventory index for February was 6.5 months, compared to 15.3 months in the previous year. The index refers to the number of months it would take to deplete the current inventory. It took a median of 51.5 days to sell a single-family home in February, compared to 69.3 days in February 2008.

A San Diego Realtor, recently informed me that in San Diego (one of the hardest hit markets) and surrounding area homes below $500,000:

are getting multiple offers in days, even hours, and often selling sell over full price.

Wanted to share this as California is the largest market for Hawaii buyers (outside of Hawaii). We also see that national sales increased as well.  What do you think? When will we see a recovery in the housing market here?  Do you think there will be any lag here?