With one week of the college football season in the books, perhaps you too are in the market for a new place to sleep after being warned repeatedly that the refrigerator would not make it down the basement stairs to the TV room. Well, it appears some already have beat us into the market. The latest numbers on Lawrence home sales show signs of an uptick heading into the fall season.

Home sales in Lawrence increased by 3 percent in July compared with the same period a year ago. According to numbers compiled by the Lawrence Board of Realtors, there were 145 home sales in July, up from 141 in July 2013.

Although 3 percent — or four extra home sales — isn’t anything to jump up and down about, the month represented a bit of a turnaround. Sales in June were down by about 6 percent, and sales in May were down by about 7.5 percent. So an increase in July was a welcome sight. (Still, I wouldn’t jump up and down, especially not with a football-shaped bowl of guacamole dip on a couch that hasn’t been Scotch-guarded. I definitely wouldn’t do that, again.)

For the year, though, home sales are still lagging last year’s pace. Lawrence home sales through July are down 4.6 percent compared with the same period a year ago. Home sales have totaled 667. Unless the fall season is quite a bit busier than it was a year ago, it looks like Lawrence’s streak of two straight years of increasing home sales will come to an end in 2014.

While July provided some good news for the overall housing market, it did not provide a boost for the home-building industry. Only eight newly constructed homes were sold in July, which is down from 11 in July 2013 and down from 10 in July 2012. The market for newly constructed homes has been soft all year in Lawrence. Through July, newly constructed home sales are down 38 percent compared with the same period a year ago. A total of 38 new homes have been sold, compared with 62 at this time last year.

Other numbers of note from the report:

• The median selling price of homes in the market is down 3.2 percent to $163,500. But median selling prices are tricky to interpret. That could mean a general downturn in housing prices, or it could just mean that the type and size of home selling in the market has changed a bit. More on home prices in a moment.

• The median number of days a home sits on the market has dropped significantly. The median now stands at 33 days, down from 42 at this point in 2013 and down from 60 days in 2012.

• The number of homes on the market continues to drop. In July, there were 417 active listings, down from 437 a year ago and down from 500 in July 2012.

In other news and notes from around town:

• While we’re on the topic of Lawrence real estate, perhaps you are wondering whether housing values in the city really are going up or down. (Personally, I’m spending more time wondering how to get this giant foam finger unwound from the ceiling fan.)

Well, a new report has come out that shows Lawrence housing prices are on the upswing in 2014, but haven’t quite yet recovered all their losses from the past five years. The Federal Housing Finance Agency recently released its report for the second quarter of 2014, and it found Lawrence housing prices have increased by about 2 percent during the last year. That 2 percent growth rate ranked Lawrence at No. 195 in terms of the 276 metro areas that are ranked by the federal agency. So, Lawrence’s housing rebound hasn’t been fast and furious, but that should be no surprise. Real estate officials here have long said that Lawrence’s market is characterized by an absence of big swings either up or down in terms of prices.

The report also notes that over the last five years, home prices in Lawrence are down 0.18 percent. Indeed, the value of homes in Lawrence did see a decline over the last five years, but the latest data show that Lawrence is on the cusp of erasing that deficit. If Lawrence stays on its current pace, it won’t take long to move into positive territory again. The study found that home prices increased by a healthy 1.27 percent during the second quarter of 2014. That was in line with the national average of 1.3 percent.

Here’s a look at how some other regional communities fared:

• Kansas City: 3.56 percent for 1 year; negative 3.24 percent for 5 years.

• Topeka: negative 0.18 percent for 1 year; negative 2.21 percent for 5 years.

• Wichita: 0.28 percent for 1 year; negative 2.26 percent for 5 years.

As you can see, Lawrence’s real estate market is bouncing back better than our neighbors’, although Kansas City is on a fairly hot pace right now. These numbers are welcome news to city and county officials. The county appraiser looks at similar types of data, which means that it is likely the property value on your tax bills once again will start to increase.

This federal report is considered a more reliable view of housing prices in a community than the local data released by the Lawrence Board of Realtors. That’s because the federal index doesn’t simply look at all the homes sold and create an average price. It has access to mortgage information and refinancing information through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Without getting too technical, it does a better job of comparing apples with apples than the local reports are able to do.

But still, the report is not perfect. For example, it likely hasn’t factored in the addition of a full-size fridge in the basement TV room. Oh yeah, it went down the stairs. Gravity took care of that.