Tampa Palms has always prided itself on living above the fray. Although you may not have escaped this latest housing crisis unscathed, you've fared far better than most other communities in Tampa Bay.

January home sales in Tampa Bay were up 14.3% over last year, but Tampa Palms trounced that number, bringing in 57% more sales this January than last. Granted, only 11 homes sold in all of Tampa Palms last month, but with all the negative real estate numbers we've been seeing lately, we'll take all the good news we can get!

Of the 11 home sales in January, only three were single family homes. The rest were condos. The median sold price per square foot fell 22.9% from $130/sq.ft to $100/sq.ft. Given that the median home size of sales last year was 2,648 sq.ft last year, that means the median home in Tampa Palms is worth right around $264,800 based on January sales.

So why are prices still falling? The answer is distressed sales. Yes, Tampa Palms, even your residents were not completely insulated from the Great Recession. 33% of Tampa Palms home sales in January 2011 were either foreclosures or Short Sales – "distressed sales", in industry jargon. The number of distressed sales jumps to 82% when we add in condos. Last year, we had no distressed sales of single family homes in January and only 43% of sales were distressed when we add condos to last year's numbers. So distressed sales have definitely increased year of year.

The real estate industry insists on comparing same-month sales, so that's where we started our analysis. But that practice can mask the true health of a community, especially since January is always the slowest month for sales in any given year.

When we looked at the last 12 months, home sales in Tampa Palms have been slightly increasing – spiking considerable in June, when the home buyer tax credit was in full swing. So your increasing home sales trend seems stable.

Sold prices haven't been too bad either. Although they've fluctuated between $100 and $130 per square foot, the median for the year was $125. So no need to get down on home values just because January was a bad month – the picture for 2010 didn't look quite as dire.

Overall, the trends for Tampa Palms are pretty favorable. Only 10.5% of single family home sales last year were foreclosures or short sales. That's way below the regional average of 45%. So while distressed sale prices are pulling down home values in the rest of Tampa, Tampa Palms home prices are only suffering because buyers can get better deals in other communities.

So here's the message: Encourage your fellow Tampa Palms owners to stand firm on their prices. Price decline is only occurring in Tampa Palms because folks are more anxious to sell (average days on marketing is decreasing) and you're cutting your prices to attract buyers. Also, demand for higher-end homes is still sluggish due to the Great Recession, so sales will be slow in Tampa Palms until the economy picks up.

As long as you continue to hold your own and don't succumb to external market pressures, you should recover nicely. Then you can get back to riding high above the fray!