Valley real estate prices are rising, but many homeowners still likely won’t make back what they paid for their house for a while. From Phoenix, KJZZ’s Mark Brodie reports.

MARK BRODIE: The median price for a Valley home was just under $135,000 in March. That’s about $10,000 higher than February, and more than $20,000 higher than last March. Mike Orr studies real estate at the W.P. Carey School of Business at ASU, and says the numbers are relative.

MIKE ORR: We’ve got a situation where prices are going up almost as fast as they did during the bubble, but from a very low point. So, they’re in a sort of recovery to the norm. We’re still way below the long term trend line. So, although they’re quite a bit more expensive than last year, they’re still a lot cheaper than they were at the peak, or even if we’d never had a bubble, they’re still cheaper than they would have been if we’d just had prices move in line with inflation.

BRODIE: Orr says prices would still have to go up about 30 percent to get to that point. But, he says, the rising prices mean homeowners who bought between 2009 and 2011 are starting to generate some equity.