We'll find out how many people bought homes in November -- and for how much -- later this morning. In the meantime, chew on these figures from October:

--35 percent of the homes sold in the Baltimore metro area were financed with FHA-insured loans

--32 percent were financed with conventional loans

--21 percent were bought with cash, though real estate investors tell me that category includes the deals they struck with money loaned to them by other local investors

--7 percent were financed with VA-insured loans

--3 percent were assumptions, where the buyer took on the seller's loan

--The rest were financed in other ways, including just over half a dozen in which the buyer's "lender" was the seller

The numbers come from the stats arm of Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, which runs the area's multiple-listing service.