Washington D.C. and the surrounding areas in Maryland and Virginia saw something in September that not many places across the country have seen; an increase in home prices. Unfortunately, while the prices increased, the median sale price did fall a bit.

Sales were up almost 19% in September in the area from just a year ago; with the median sale price declining almost 5% to $371,568.

Houses in D.C. are also selling for most of what the owner is asking. The average sale price in the area was 92% of the asking price.

Seeing any area, particularly a large metro area gaining in sales of homes is a pretty good (and not outrageous) sign that the economy is doing a bit better than it was a year ago. Then again, a year ago, credit had completely frozen as the subprime crisis really took off.

As banks have begun to lend again, more homes have started to sell. As the homes start to sell, prices will gradually begin to rise again. The rise will be in areas where there are jobs and every list that I’ve read says the jobs are in Washington D.C. due to the amount of government jobs as well as all of the large companies that are headquartered there.

When I was in Maryland over the summer, it didn’t seem like the recession had hit there as bad as it looked in other parts of the country I have seen in the last year. For example, while Chris and I were in St. Louis in August, restaurants were basically empty at dinner time. It’s not like we were going to obscure places either. The only restaurant I noticed was busy the entire time we were there was a Cheesecake Factory in one of the larger malls in the area. In Maryland, everything was always busy it seemed. Shopping centers were full of cars usually and there weren’t a lot of empty businesses making it look like a ghost town.

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In other January figures:

• Factories slashed 207,000 jobs. That was the largest one-month drop since October 1982, partly reflecting heavy losses at plants making autos and related parts.

• Construction companies cut 111,000 jobs, professional and business services 121,000, retailers 45,000 and leisure and hospitality companies 28,000.

• There were gains for education and health services, as well as in government jobs, but those were swamped by the losses elsewhere.

The source article says that “best case scenario,” if the recession were to end in the fall, the job market would remain unstable for some time.

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