Courtesy: Kansas Department of Labor

We’re still in that beginning-of-a-new-year period, which means there are certain things that have to be done: Break a resolution, break a treadmill, break an elastic waistband. And if you are a reporter, add one more to the list: Report on recently released year-end numbers. I have two quick ones to share with you today: 2015 numbers for home sales and jobs in Lawrence.

First, the real estate market . . . It was a bounce-back year for home sales in Lawrence. Home sales increased by 11.5 percent in 2015, according to a new report from the Lawrence Board of Realtors. It was uncertain how the market would perform in 2015 because in 2014 home sales had become stagnant. Lawrence posted only a 0.1 percent gain in 2014.

Worth noting is that Lawrence’s real estate market outperformed the national real estate market, which saw sales of homes grow by 7 percent, according to the National Association of Realtors. Lawrence also slightly outperformed the Kansas City real estate market. The KC metro area saw home sales increase by 10.7 percent, according to the Kansas City Regional Association of Realtors.

But there are questions about whether the market will continue along at this pace in 2016. Local real estate agents are expressing concern about the diminishing number of homes that are on the market. In December, the number of homes on the market fell to 240. That’s down from 281 at the same time period in 2014 and from 303 in December 2013. Real estate agents have expressed concern that reduced inventories will ultimately reduce sales. Sales in December did fall a modest 2.6 percent compared with December 2014.

Here’s a look at some other numbers from the new report:

• The median selling price of Lawrence homes in 2015 was $169,000, up 1.2 percent from 2014, but down from $170,000 in 2013. Home prices in Lawrence are acting much differently from what has happened in the Kansas City market. The median selling price in the metro increased by 6.7 percent, to $169,900, according to numbers released by the KC Board of Realtors.

• The number of newly constructed homes that sold in 2015 was 81. That was an increase of 6.6 percent from 2014 numbers, but there are signs that market still hasn’t really hit its stride. The 81 homes sales still represented a decline from 2013 numbers when 94 new homes were sold. The new construction market in Lawrence is much different from what builders are seeing in the Kansas City area. In the metro, sales of newly constructed homes grew by 15.2 percent.

• In case you are wondering, the median selling price for a newly constructed home in Lawrence is $306,500. In the Kansas City metro area, it is $331,470.

• The median number of days a home sits on the market before it sells was 25 in 2015. That’s down from 34 in 2014 and 42 in 2013. That’s also an area where Lawrence’s home market is different from Kansas City’s. In the metro, the average number of days on market is 74. The low number of days on market might be another sign of Lawrence’s declining housing inventory. Buyers can’t afford to wait long if they want to close the deal.

• On the jobs front . . . Lawrence finished 2015 on a high note. According to new numbers from the state, Lawrence had the highest job growth rate of any metro area in Kansas in December.

Lawrence had 800 more jobs at the end of December 2015 than it did at the end of December 2014, according to the Kansas Department of Labor. That was good for a 1.5 percent growth rate. Wichita posted a 1.1 percent growth rate during the same time period, while Topeka was a 0.4 percent and Kansas City basically was unchanged. The state report doesn’t break out the numbers for Manhattan. A federal report due out later this month, however, does. For much of the year, Manhattan has been leading the state in job growth, but Lawrence has been closely behind.

Job numbers are tricky to report because they are fluid. The job picture in Lawrence in July looks quite a bit different from the job picture in November. But Lawrence generally has been posting positive monthly numbers in 2015, which had not been the case a couple of years ago.

The state numbers don’t provide specifics on what type of jobs are being added in Lawrence, but they do provide that data for the state as a whole. Here’s a look:

• Mining and logging: down 1,000 jobs

• Construction: up 4,500 jobs

• Manufacturing: up 400 jobs

• Trade, transportation and utilities: up 1,500 jobs

• Information: up 300 jobs

• Financial activities: up 150 jobs

• Professional and business services: down 1,600 jobs

• Education and health services: up 3,300 jobs

• Leisure and hospitality: up 1,000 jobs

• Government: down 2,500 jobs

Douglas County finished the year with an unemployment rate of 3 percent compared with 2.9 percent in Johnson County and 3.6 percent in Shawnee County. Here’s a look at unemployment rates for the entire state: