The stock market has been lousy for the last few months, so maybe Lawrence residents are putting their money into real estate. New homes with cry rooms, so you can read your 401(k) statements, perhaps are the rage. Whatever the case, Lawrence’s home buying market remains hot.

Home sales are up 18.5 percent for the year, according to the latest report from the Lawrence Board of Realtors. The latest report tracked sales in August, and they were up nearly 18 percent from August 2014. That marked the sixth straight month of increasing home sales in Lawrence.

The market is hot enough that some real estate agents now have concerns about having enough homes to sell. The report shows the number of contracts written in August was down about 15 percent. That’s an indication that home sale numbers may fall in future months.

The number of active listings on the market fell to 322, down about 22 percent from levels a year ago. Crystal Swearingen, president of the local board of Realtors, said the declining inventory levels are putting pressure on the market.

“Inventory levels continue to be a concern and may very well be the lone reason for a decrease in the number of contracts written during August,” she said in the report.

The low inventory levels, though, have been a boon to home sellers. Homes are not staying on the market long. The median number of days a home is on the market is down to 23. That’s down from 34 a year ago and 42 days in 2013.

Swearingen said current inventory levels also will start producing upward pressure on prices. Pricing issues are more difficult to gauge from the board’s report because it only looks at overall pricing trends rather than a comparison of prices for similar homes. The overall pricing trend shows the median selling price is about $166,000, which is up about 1.5 percent from a year ago, but is still below the $170,000 median in 2013.

The August report also continues to show that sales of newly constructed homes are bouncing back somewhat in 2015. In August, 11 newly constructed homes were sold, up from nine in August 2014. For the year-to-date, newly constructed home sales are up to 57 sales, an increase of about 21 percent from the same time period a year ago. But new home sales continue to lag 2013’s pace by about 20 percent.

In other news and notes from around town:

• When it comes to tracking the price of homes in Lawrence, nobody does it more often than the Douglas County Appraiser’s office, the government agency responsible for setting a property tax value on your home.

The latest report from that office indicates homes prices are up just a bit in Lawrence and Douglas County. Through late August, the appraiser’s office has reviewed 870 home sales. The average price is up 1.8 percent compared with last year.

While that is not a huge gain, it is a turnaround of sorts for the market. At this point in 2014, the average selling price was down by about 1 percent.

The numbers from the appraiser’s office are always good to watch because that data is used to determine the tax value of your home. It is too early to guess whether home owners will see their property tax values rise much for the coming year. One number to watch is a measurement called the “median sales ratio.” (I know, it brings back memories of a back row of a high school math class.) The ratio measures how much a home sold for versus how much the county appraiser had it valued. The ratio currently stands at 96.7 percent. That means the value that the appraiser has on a piece of property is, on average, about 3 percent lower than what the property actually sold for.

When that ratio starts to get too low, that’s generally when the appraiser starts raising the tax values on homes. The goal is for the ratio to be 100 percent. At 96.7 percent, that’s still pretty close, although people who play horseshoes with me tell me my definition of close is flawed.

We still have a ways to go before we learn of any changes to the tax values of properties. Change of value notices will be sent out in early 2016.

• You will have to make of this one whatever you will. I had a reader ask me to check on whether the wife of City Commissioner Matthew Herbert works at the Lawrence Arts Center. Herbert told me she does, but only two hours a week as an instructor in a jewelry-making class.

The issue came up after the City Commission was fairly sharply divided last month over whether to provide $100,000 in funding to the Arts Center for the upcoming Free State Festival. Commissioners ended up giving the group $60,000, after the four-members of the commission couldn’t reach a consensus on the $100,000 request. Herbert advocated for the $100,000 request.

The issue will kind of come back up again tonight. Commissioners will be interviewing the six finalists to fill the vacant seat on the City Commission. Each commissioner gets to ask two questions of the candidates. They disclose their questions in advance. Herbert is using one of his two questions to ask candidates how they would have voted on this $100,000 issue.

The money is not much in the city’s overall budget — it also is worth noting the money would come from the city’s guest tax fund that is charged to hotel users, rather than from a general tax fund — but the issue has been contentious.

Following the meeting where commissioners failed to fund the $100,000 request, Herbert took to his Twitter account and said “Tonight was a sad night for Free State Fest. I never thought the Lawrence CC would wage war on Culture.”

I’m pretty sure the two commissioners who opposed the $100,000 request — but supported $60,000 in funding — didn’t think they were waging a war on culture. (They are Commissioners Stuart Boley and Leslie Soden, for the record.)

Herbert’s comments and his questioning tonight may open up a debate worth having at City Hall: What’s the right amount of funding for the arts in Lawrence? The city in recent years has made a push to fund more with the hiring of a new director of arts and culture position. The arts community also has been a strong advocate for greater arts funding, often noting the arts have positive spin-off benefits for the economy.

Whether the general public wants to see more arts funding is less clear. As part of its Citizen Survey, the city this year asked residents what three priorities they think the city should spend money on as part of its Capital Improvement Plan. The category of “support for arts and culture” was included as a top three priority by only 29 percent of respondents. That was the lowest score of the six priorities listed by the city. That is just one answer, though. Maintaining a high quality of life also scored high in the survey, and certainly the arts can play into quality of life issues.

So, like I said, it is unclear. But it seems like it is a debate that may be shaping up at City Hall.

As for the issue of Herbert’s wife working for the Arts Center, I think it is worth noting, but also worth keeping in perspective. It is two hours a week. It also is worth noting that Herbert hasn’t tried to conceal the fact that his wife is a full-time artist. That was known throughout the campaign, and he has mentioned it otherwise during his tenure on the commission. In a town the size of Lawrence, it is not uncommon for commissioners to have to vote on items that they have some tangential connection to. Downtown business owners, for example, vote on downtown items all the time. In the past, we have noted those connections, and moved on.

Consider this one now noted.