U.S. builders started more new homes in February than the month before, the first increase since June, as Michael Dresser points out in a story today. And permit numbers didn't fall. (They were either up or steady -- there's a margin of error in the Commerce Department statistics.) Dresser talked to local homebuilders, who say sales are "edging up."

As always when there's a one-month housing upturn, the question is bottom or blip. I'd be interested in your thoughts, and your sense of how new-home deals compare with homeowners' asking prices.

I was also curious about how things stand locally on new home permits, which is something the Maryland Department of Planning tracks. Local figures aren't adjusted for normal seasonal variations, so you can't really compare them to the previous month -- just the previous year. With that in mind, here's the lowdown:

In January, the most recent figures, builders got permits to construct 224 homes and apartments in the Baltimore metro area. That's down 64 percent from January 2008, when builders took out permits for more than 600 homes.

The year-over-year comparison for the U.S.: Permits were down 50 percent in January from a year earlier.

Here's the local permit breakdown in January: 51 units in Anne Arundel, 11 in Baltimore City, 107 in Baltimore County, three in Carroll (yes, three), 21 in Harford and 31 in Howard.

John Kortecamp, chief executive officer of the Home Builders Association of Maryland, told Dresser that a number of builders still have inventory to sell.

"They're building enough to stay in business but not enough to get ahead of themselves," he said.