You've heard all about how new home sales nationwide are at their lowest level since the early '90s. Of how sales of existing homes have fallen in seven of the last eight months. Of some of the doomsday projections that the housing crisis - and it clearly is that in  California and Florida - will result in an economic collapse to rival the Great Depression.

That's the bad news. The good news is that for us here in Washington, the housing market - while clearly softening - remains stronger than the rest of the nation.

That's not to say things are great. The Fed's "Beige Book" report last month noted that home prices "have flattened or begun to fall in other areas that had shown resilience ?such as Utah and parts of the Pacific Northwest." And as we discuss in this week's "By the Numbers" segment, incomes for companies in the finance and real estate sector took a beating in the fourth quarter: banks saw revenues fall 12 percent, and real estate offices were down by almost 10 percent. Between them, revenues were off more than $125 million compared to Q4 '06. Employment in these sectors is down by 2,400 people in the past year, according to the most-recent state report. And Cowlitz County may be Washington's one big pocket of subprime mortgages; with some 4,000 of them sold between 2004 and 2006, there's a real risk of rising foreclosures.

Yet there's been resilience in Washington state markets. The most-recent report from the federal Office of Housing Enterprise Oversight showed Wenatchee once again had the biggest rates of home-price gains in the nation -13.7 percent. On a nationwide basis, home prices fell 5.6 percent, the feds said, but Washington's average price was up 5.4 percent year-over-year. Longview (up 7.3 percent) and Spokane (up 7.1 percent) were both strong enough to join Wenatchee in the agency's list of the nation's Top 20 markets.

As we've discussed before, the Washington Center for Real Estate Research reported statewide home sales volumes were down about 25 percent in the most-recent quarter, while median sale prices fell 2.5 percent. Only Chelan and Douglas counties (the area around Wenatchee) showed growth in sales volumes - both at about 16 percent. However, nine eastern Washington counties showed double-digit gains in price (led by Grant at 21 percent). Metro Puget Sound prices mostly held steady, with Snohomish posting slight gains, Kitsap a slight loss, and King and Pierce counties essentially flat.   

And the latest survey by the National Association of Realtors found big price gains in Yakima (up 18 percent) and the Tri-Cities (14 percent) - plus weaker markets in Spokane (up 2.6 percent), Seattle (up 1.8 percent) and Portland-Vancouver (up 1.6 percent).

Each of these reports crunches different data, and some of the numbers are contradictory. But overall, they show that even though the big boom years in real estate clearly are over, there are still pockets of strength across the state, and even in the weaker areas, the markets are correcting but not collapsing - at least not yet.