The 30 percent decline was a lot more than the nation's as a whole -- 16 percent. But it's an improvement on the first three months of the year, when Maryland sales dropped 39 percent vs. a year earlier, worst in the nation.

The Realtors group also compared sales in April-June with January-March, adjusted for seasonal variations, and said that 13 states saw increases. Maryland was not one of them; its sales dropped about 5 percent, about middle of the pack.

Single-family home prices, meanwhile, dropped 4.5 percent in the Baltimore metro area in the spring, according to the NAR, which does not has price information by state. That's also roughly middle-of-the-pack performance, at least among the 150 metro areas the NAR tracks. (Prices in the Washington area are down 17 percent, according to its number-crunching. Sacramento, Calif. prices are down 36 percent.)

You Wonk commenters who have said sales will pick up when prices drop enough might be interested to see this part of the Realtors' press release:

Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said a clear cause-and-effect response has developed in the housing market. “The biggest home-sales gains over the previous quarter have been in some of the markets with the steepest and fastest price drops,” Yun said.

The only states reporting year-over-year gains in sales? Nevada and California, which have been among the hardest-hit by the slump.