The 818’s housing market got its game back in April, with sales spiking upward almost 5% year to year for the first time since July.

Across the San Fernando Valley, 495 single-family homes changed hands in April, 22 more than a year ago and 24% more than in March of this year, according to the Southland Regional Association of Realtors reported in their latest numbers, reveiled on Friday.

The median price of a home — the midpoint price at which half the homes cost less and half cost more stood at $695,000 — and that was about .3% down from last year and just a tad hire than March of this year.

The bump upward came after a dip earlier this year that had buyers getting a bit more leverage after months of record high prices and really tight inventories. Last year, in May and August, the median price of a home in the region that made the Valley Girl famous and where Tom Petty once sang about vampires on Ventura Boulevard was a whopping record high of $708,000.

The bump also comes in the midst of what many see as an affordable housing crisis throughout L.A. and the Valley, where observers have worried about a shrinking middle class of residents who work in retail, leisure, hospitality and education as being priced out of living in the region.

In a February presentation in front of several local business leaders, Matthew Fienup, executive director of California Lutheran University’s Center for Economic Research and Forecasting, said that there’s a “hollowing out” of the Valley’s middle class, which he called a “cautionary note” to an otherwise roaring regional economy that’s outpacing the rest of Southern California. But there’s another kind of outpacing going on, according to reports, and it’s a bit more melancholy.

In the seven years since the housing crash ended, home values in more than three-quarters of U.S. metro areas have climbed faster than incomes, data compiled by The Associated Press shows.

Some particular numbers stood out in a recent Daily News story:

Home prices increased four times faster than wages in Los Angeles and Orange counties from the summer of 2011 through the summer of 2018.

Meanwhile, incomes rose 17% in L.A. County, house prices rose 73%.

So, in that context, Realtors have been keen to watching a market with diverging forces pushing and pulling on it, with a sprinkling of good news for buyers trying to buy the most affordable home possible. That good news is that after home sales hit a low in February, some home sellers have realized that prices had been rising too fast and needed to loosen up a bit on prices if they wanted to unload their home.

“A slowly increasing inventory, lower interest rates, and sellers willing to negotiate all contributed to the April increase in sales,” Dan Tresierras, president of the association, said in a statement accompanying the new data. “The fourth consecutive month of lower interest rates bolstered buyer confidence in the market, convincing them that they have greater negotiating leverage today than just a short while ago.”

The pushing and pulling in the market is a topic of conversation in nearby Santa Clarita, too. That’s where similar factors were at play in a region where homes are generally less expensive than in the San Fernando Valley. There, 214 single-family homes changed owners in April, up 12% from the year before. It was the first year-to-year increase there in five months and only the second going back to January 2018, according to the association.

“While housing is expensive, we have yet to break the record high set last decade, which makes us relatively affordable, especially considering what Santa Clarita has to offer residents,” said Amanda Etcheverry, chairwoman of the Santa Clarita chapter of the Southland Regional Association of Realtors.

“We’re right in the middle: housing here is less expensive than the San Fernando Valley and L.A., yet not as affordable as Palmdale,” Etcheverry said. “I brag about this city constantly. The perks are amazing. Yet we have this ongoing tension between our historical small-town roots and the forces of change washing over the (Santa Clarita) Valley and all of California.”