Local home prices remain lower, but homes are slowly starting to sell as homeowners become realistic about how much money they can get for the properties, Realtors said Tuesday.

Local real estate agents expect more of the same in 2012.

The local agents were reacting to new data from the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller housing price index, which on Tuesday showed that home prices fell in 19 of 20 major U.S. cities in October. Case-Shiller found significant price declines in Midwestern housing markets such as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Minneapolis.

“Atlanta and the Midwest are regions that really stand out in terms of recent relative weakness,” said David Blitzer, chairman of Standard and Poor’s index committee. “These markets were some of the strongest during the spring/summer buying season.”

Sales of Dayton-area homes rose 12.4 percent in November 2011 compared to November 2010, said Jesse Livesay, CEO of the Dayton Area Board of Realtors. That’s the fifth straight month residential sales have risen, compared to 2010.

However, the prices paid for those homes fell. The average selling price in November 2011 dropped one-half of one percent to $115,700 when compared to November 2010, Livesay said. And the area’s median sales price for the month was up 1.4 percent compared to last year to $91,250.

Year to date, the area’s median sales price fell 8.7 percent to $94,900, Livesay said.

“I think sellers are really becoming more realistic in terms of pricing their homes,” Livesay said.

Livesay expects local home sales in 2012 to continue to rise, extending the five-month trend. “At what level, depends on the state of the economy, continued increase in local employment and the fantastic interest rates now available” he added.

“It is totally a buyers’ market, no question about it,” said Mike Royce, a Dayton Realtor. Royce expects foreclosures and short sales — in which a lender accepts less on a property than is owed on a mortgage — to continue.

Prospective homebuyers are often finding that they can buy a home for less than they can rent a comparable residence, said Bob Wilson, manager of the Kettering office of Irongate Realtors Inc.

“The prices on some of these homes are so incredible low,” Wilson said.

Gene Snavley, CEO at the Cincinnati Area Board of Realtors, sees jobs as crucial. “Housing sales are tied to jobs,” he said. “If we have improvement in jobs, we’re going to have improvement in housing numbers.”

Snavley said his board’s average sale price in October was $148,083, down from $153,378 in October 2010.

“Some of the other housing statistics posted relatively healthy figures for November, but it seems that most of the good news was confined to the multi-family sector,” Blitzer said in a statement. “Existing home sales rose in November, but are still at a low annual rate of about 4.0 million.”

The Case-Shiller Index follows single-family home prices in 20 big U.S. cities.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2390 or tgnau@DaytonDailyNews.com.