I recently heard a report on the national news that home values were in a "free fall." Not being exactly sure what a free fall is, I looked it up. A "rapid, uncontrolled decline" was the meaning I settled on. If, in fact, home values were in a free fall, that would be very bad for those of us who own real estate, especially those who have invested a lot in their own homes. And since the average American family has a large part of their net worth tied up in their house, a "free fall" in home values could spell trouble for many reading this column.

Thus, I was pleasantly surprised when the most widely trusted home price index for the United States was released recently. It showed that, in fact, home prices are not in free fall. Instead, it showed that Georgia home values for the fourth quarter of 2007 were, in fact, slightly higher than they had ever been. The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (www.ofheo.gov) is charged with supervising Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both government-chartered "market-makers" for home loans. The office has access to data on home sales and refinancings from all over the United States. Here's what the house price index revealed.

Here are the facts:

• The oversight office's all-transaction HPI includes data from home sales and appraisals for refinancings. That index rose 0.1 percent over the latest quarter and 0.8 percent for the year 2007. The "all-transactions" index is the broadest measure of home values available anywhere. I realize that a national average home price increase of less than 1 percent is statistically no increase at all. But after reports of my home's value being in a free fall, an increase of 0.8 percent nationally starts to sound pretty good. Remember, this number includes California, Florida and all the states where recent unsustainable price run-ups are being paid back today.

• The states with the greatest rates of appreciation between the fourth quarter of 2006 and the fourth quarter of 2007 were: Utah (9.3 percent), Wyoming (8.3 percent), North Dakota (7.9 percent), Montana (6.9 percent), and Alaska (6.0 percent). None of these states had participated in the speculative frenzy that set up our current slowdown.

• The states with the lowest rates of appreciation for the same period were: California (-6.6 percent), Nevada (-5.9 percent), Florida (-4.7 percent), Michigan (-4.3 percent), and Rhode Island (-2.6 percent). The first three are suffering from their own popularity, Michigan is in a general decline, and Rhode Island is approximately the size of Fulton, Dekalb and Gwinnett counties added together, so it's hard to say what's really happening there.

• Georgia's price appreciation for 2007 ranked 24th on the list of states, and indicated that the typical home here increased in value by 2.55 percent during the year. It also showed a small increase of 0.76 percent in the fourth quarter alone.

• The Atlanta metro area ended the year with a small, but important increase as well. The all-transaction index showed the average metro area home was up 1.67 percent for the year, with a 0.67 percent increase in the difficult fourth quarter.

Some of you may remember that the widely publicized S&P/Case-Schiller index of home prices came out earlier this year, and it showed home prices in Georgia declining, although only slightly. I chose not to dwell on those numbers, and I want you to know why.

The Case-Schiller national index uses only resale data from county tax records in 37 states, while the office of oversight index uses Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac appraisal data from sales in all 50 states. In addition to having complete national coverage, the oversight office index expands its data by including refinancings, giving it a much broader base of information from which to draw conclusions.

The HPI is based on more than 34 million repeat transaction over 32 years. I guess this means I am still in denial about the broad-based "free fall" in housing values across the nation and here in Georgia.