For everyone who swears by the Case-Shiller home price index, there's another person who rightfully points out that its data is a bit sloth-like in arriving.

Case in point: Yesterday we published Tampa Bay home sales data from Realtors showing a solid October. But Case-Shiller is still churning out September numbers that we already know were lackluster.

Here they are anyway. Tampa Bay housing values dipped 0.6 percent from August to September. The average price change on the 20-city index was a rise of 0.3 percent. As you can see, we were a laggard.

From September 2008 to September 2009, homes depreciated 16.7 percent in Tampa Bay. What struck me was that Miami, which we've outperformed on price for more than a year, depreciated less than us over the year. It's probably a one-month blip.

For all of Case-Shiller's mathematical sophistication, the peak-to-trough home price change for Tampa, at minus 40 percent, almost matches Realtor numbers. So expect Case-Shiller's October report, which comes out before Christmas, to show a healthy housing market improvement.

But we already know that, don't we?