Home sales up -- and prices too. That's something rarely seen in the same month in the Baltimore metro area for the past, oh, four years, and it happened in April as buyers rushed to get both feet in the door before the home buyer tax credit expired.

You know how investment firms warn that "past performance is no guarantee of future results"? The April housing market is that times 10, because you can't expect things to look the same on either side of a deadline for up to $8,000 in cash from Uncle Sam.

But it was certainly an interesting month. A few stats from Metropolitan Regional Information Systems:

Home sales in the metro area jumped 35 percent from a year ago.

Newly signed contracts -- future sales, if they close as planned -- ratcheted up about 50 percent.

Average sale prices inched up not quite 1 percent in the region, ranging from a 2 percent drop in Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties to double-digit increases in Baltimore City and Carroll County.

Newly listed homes for sale in April topped 6,000, the most since the spring months of 2007 -- a sign that buyers weren't the only ones motivated by the deadline.

Read more in today's story, which includes a home builder with an interesting week after the deadline and a seller with unfortunate timing. (Bought a rowhouse to rehab, put it on the market in 2007 -- still waiting.)