For the 15th straight month, home prices in Denver have risen. On Tuesday, the newly released Standard & Poor/Case Shiller Index arrived with the news that the average sale price of a home here in March rose 9.8 percent over the same month in 2012. The increases were even steeper in markets such as Phoenix, San Francisco, and Las Vegas.

All this should be a sure sign that our national housing market is in full recovery mode after a long slumber. Or is it? While anyone selling a house would surely welcome the news that its value has risen, this trend won’t necessarily help the overall market’s health unless more sellers get in the game.

An earlier report noted that new housing starts have dipped nationally in recent months, and when inventory is low, prices rise to meet demand. If more properties don’t become available via resale or new construction, prices could continue to rise to unsustainable levels, which would put us right back in the muck.

So if you’re on the fence about selling, now’s a good time to pick a side. With interest rates still flirting with historic lows and your old house sure to sell, you could be in a position to get a new home that’s considerably better than what you thought you could afford. The more people start thinking this way, the better it would be for the Denver market as a whole.

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Follow 5280 articles editor Luc Hatlestad on Twitter at @LucHatlestad.