The housing market can use all the good news it can get, and the latest news out of Southern California is definitely good, as home sales in the month of April reportedly jumped 22% in that part of the state.

California has been hit pretty hard in the recent housing crunch. Of course, the reason why California has been so hard hit is because it was also one of the states that had the best growth during the housing boom.

The flip side of the story is that the rise in home sales was mostly led by bargain hunters who swooped into the market and picked up foreclosed properties. According to the report, 38% of the homes purchased last month had been involved in foreclosure procedures at some point over the past year.

Southern California properties that were once soaring have definitely come back to earth over the past year. This time last year, the average price of homes sold in the area was running at $505,000, while the average price for the homes purchased last month was 24% lower, down at "only" $385,000. That's a pretty big difference for just a 12 month period, but that should not be news to any of you, since it has been hard to avoid reading about falling home prices in the area over the past year.

While a 22% jump in April has to be seen as good news, if you compare it to the same month last year, the figures are not that encouraging. April had 19% fewer home sales than the same period last year, with a total homes sales equaling 19,269, the weakest April that the area has seen since all the way back in 1995.

So we are seeing signs that some buyers are getting to the point where they are ready to jump in on the lower priced properties, perhaps indicating that buyers just don't see how things can get much worse. The question is, when will they come back into the medium to higher priced properties. Once we see the higher value homes starting to sell again can we finally start to believe that things may have turned the corner for the state, and possibly point to signs of the housing market rebounding on a national basis. But for now, the market is still looking a bit stormy.

How are things looking in your neck of the woods? Have you been seeing prices beginning to stabilize in your area, or still heading lower? Let us know where you live and how the market is acting in your area.

Michael Fowlkes has worked as a stock trader for seven years and spent the last four years working as an analyst for the online investment advisory service Investor's Observer.