Understanding today's real estate market can be very confusing with conflicting news reports and sound bites showing the market going up and down at the same time.

For example, a recent headline from the National Association of Realtors read: "Existing-Home Sales Continue to Improve in April," but in the same week, Housing Wire, a blog which compiles wire stories and original articles about US mortgages and housing, reported on the same information but with this conflicting headline.  "Is May's Home Sales Decline an Alarming Signal of What's To Come?"  

Reports from the National Association of Realtors reveal some clues about the overall view and direction of the real estate market, and the Westchester-Putnam Board of Realtors provides information on a regional level with the entire county lumped together, yet there are stark contracts from town-to-town.

The reason many reports are confusing is because each report isolates and evaluates different criteria. On any given month evaluating closed sales reports versus pending sales reports can paint a very different picture as to the direction of the market. 

If you are trying to determine whether it is a good time to sell or buy the answer lies in understanding the hyper-local market where you live or want to live. 

Hyper-local information narrows the market to sales and statistics within an elementary school area. This is important because the new mortgage regulations require additional evaluations and guidelines for appraisers based on the hyper-local area in order to secure a mortgage.

These include but are not limited to:

• Months of unsold inventory
• Total number of homes on the market by price range
• Median price of homes
• Comparable sales of similar style
• Number of closed sales within an area by price range
• Number of homes in contract and/or pending sales
• Average number of days a home is on the market.

So, when deciding if it is a good time to sell, keep in mind that the facts of life don't change. People still get married, and some divorce, families grow and contract, and careers take twists and turns. 

Through it all, people still want and need a place to live, and the right home for them might not be the one that they're in right now.  So if you accept the fact that people are going to buy a home, the question is, which one are they going to buy? 

The answer is, the one that's priced right and to accomplish that you need to understand your hyper-local market and price it accordingly.