TAMPA The Tampa area's real estate market is giving mixed signals, and it may be the result of investors eyeing potential profits.

Homes sales are climbing, up 16 percent from a year ago and 24 percent from last month. But the area's plethora of distressed properties kept the median sales price from going higher than $111,100 in February, according to the data released Monday from the Florida Realtors.

There were 2,375 sales of single-family, existing homes in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area in February. That's up from 2,050 last year and 1,911 the previous month.

And the condo landscape is bleak for sellers and red-hot for buyers, especially investors with money to fix up foreclosed properties. The median sales price for condos in the Tampa metro area was $65,100, down 27 percent from the same month last year. Sales were up a whopping 33 percent to 947 sales in February.

So what does this all mean for the spring selling season? And what about people who bought last year only to see the value keep falling?

"There are good deals out there for sure, but these numbers don't tell the whole story," said Brenda Wade, a real estate agent with Signature Realty in Brandon. "You have to look at what's selling. It's mainly distressed properties, very distressed."

While the number of sales rose, traditional buyers looking for a place to live aren't as active early in the year, Wade said. It was investors looking to "scoop up" bargains that boosted sales figures.

"Now, we'll see regular buyer demand come back as the spring-buying season starts to heat up," Wade said.

That could be good for the sales prices because those buyers typically want homes that aren't distressed, and they're willing to pay for it, Wade said.

"New homes and homes that aren't foreclosures or short sales compete with quality," she said. "Buyers go into homes that work or smell bad and say, "This is not for me."

That creates another market: homes that aren't distressed, said Jim Selvey, president of the Greater Tampa Association of Realtors. The sales prices on those homes, especially when they're located in stable neighborhoods, could sell for much higher than the median, Selvey said.

Even so, nobody wants to over pay, and appraisers are increasingly turning to distressed properties as comparable sales in estimating value.

"Appraisers used to not use foreclosed homes as a comparable in a regular sale, but now they have to in some neighborhoods," Selvey said.

The rush of investors might create a short-term problem for sellers, but Selvey said investor interest is actually a good thing. Investors typically swoop in when prices are their lowest, he said. That's one of the reasons, Selvey said, he thinks prices are close to bottom now. He pointed to the $1,000 median home price increase in February.

Another problem is that banks are slowly releasing foreclosed homes onto the market, and there is a shadow inventory of bank-owned homes waiting to be sold, said Selvey.

"It's hard to estimate how many we have coming," he said.

Statewide, sales of single-family existing homes were 13,701, up 13 percent from a year ago and nearly 13 percent from January.

The area bucked the national trend.

Sales of previously occupied homes in the U.S. fell 9.6 percent in February, the National Association of Realtors said.

Volume fell from 5.4 million in January to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.88 million, its lowest level in nearly nine years.

And prices dropped sharply to a median of $156,100, down by 5.2 percent and the lowest level since April 2002.

The drop in sales "was worse than expected but, frankly, isn't terribly shocking because, after all, pending home sales have fallen for two months straight," BMO Capital Markets economist Jennifer Lee said in a commentary.

As low as February's sales were, she said, they were "thankfully still 26 per cent above the record low pace of 3.86 million units reached just eight months ago."