Prices were up yet again in CoreLogic's HPI, rising for the third straight month.

Home prices in CoreLogic’s May home price index rose for the third consecutive month, posting both monthly and yearly gains.

From April to May, national home prices were up 1.8 percent, CoreLogic reported, and price rose year-over-year by 2 percent.

When excluding distressed sales, the data was even more positive. Monthly, prices were up 2.3 percent, and from May 2011 they are up 2.7 percent.

Anand Nallathambi, the president and chief executive officer of CoreLogic, said the latest activity in home prices may suggest a bottom for housing.

“The recent upward trend in U.S. home prices is an encouraging signal that we may be seeing a bottoming of the housing down cycle,” Nallathambi said. “Tighter inventory is contributing to broad, but modest, price gains nationwide and more significant gains in the harder-hit markets, like Phoenix.”

Other details from CoreLogic’s report included:

• CoreLogic’s Pending HPI, which anticipates home price activity, is predicting another 1.4 percent increase from May to June.
• Distressed sales continued to heavily impact individual state performance. For instance, when including distressed sales, the five states with the greatest depreciation were: Delaware (-9.0 percent), Rhode Island (-4.4 percent), Illinois (-4.2 percent), Alabama (-4.1 percent) and Georgia (-4.0 percent); but when excluding distressed sales, the states were: Delaware (-7.8), Rhode Island (-3.8), Alabama (-2.8), Connecticut (-2.2) and Kentucky (-1.2).
• Of the top 100 Core Based Statistical Areas measured by population, 29 are showing year-over-year declines in May, 12 fewer than in April.

So how do the tea leaves look from your perspective, based on CoreLogic’s latest report? Has housing bottomed, and can we anticipate future growth as the industry slowly recovers?