Aug. 26--It's that time again.

Home price season.

In the last few days, real estate watchers have been treated to a feast of new numbers, the very latest data on where the housing market is heading.

It comes in a flurry every month about now, reports from the National Association of Realtors, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, something called the S&P Case-Shiller Index, and a host of lesser known outfits like First American CoreLogic, Trulia and Zillow.

And it can be enough to make your head spin.

Tuesday, for instance, Case-Shiller reported that home prices nationwide were up in the second quarter by the most in three years, but they're still down 14.9 percent from last year. FHFA, however, said prices fell in the second quarter versus the first quarter, but were down just 6.1 percent year-over-year. Earlier this month the National Association of Realtors reported median prices down 15.6 percent from last year, to $174,100.

"There are lots of different indicators," said Richard DeKaser, president of Woodley Park Research in Washington and former chief economist at National City Corp. "And they're not always in harmony."

These numbers matter because they influence what we think our home is worth, how much we'll sell for and how much we'll pay to buy one. And they matter because they're the closest thing we have to a real-time readout on the housing market, which many say must show signs of life if the broader economy is to recover.

So how will we recognize those signs?

Actually, housing economists say, the various reports will start to look like they're looking now, with the arrows pointing more or less upward, or at least less down.

"The housing market probably hit bottom this spring and is now in the early stages of a recovery," DeKaser said. "With each month we'll get more data to either confirm or refute it. I'd say within a couple of months we ought to have a more firm picture."

Still, the reports all say slightly different things. Because they're all asking slightly different questions.

The Realtors, for instance, track the median price of homes sold by their members nationwide. The median is the point at which half of homes are sold for more, and half for less, and it can be skewed by what's on the market.

Right now, there's a lot of homes being sold at bargain prices because of foreclosures, and a lot to first-time home buyers, who tend to spend less. Higher-end homes are moving slowly. Since cheaper homes make up more of the market, they're pulling that median down -- in the St. Louis region it's off 10.1 percent over the last year.