This is fantastic news, but not unexpected. We've seen this data trending upward for 5 months now (this is after 36 straight months of price declines). It will be interesting to see what happens next month when the data post-tax credit comes in.

Here's the key comments from the article (read it all here):

For the fifth month in a row, home prices in the Denver area showed a year-over-year increase in March, and prices also rose slightly between February and March, according to the latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Prices Index.

The closely-watched report from Standard & Poor’s shows average metro-Denver home prices rising 4.1 percent in the 12 months ending March 31. Out of 20 U.S. cities covered in the Case-Shiller report, Denver was one of 12 that showed a year-over-year increase in prices.

The 4.1 percent rise was Denver's largest year-over-year price increase of the last five months. Denver prices climbed 3.6 percent in February from a year earlier, 2.6 percent in January, 1.2 percent in December 2009 and 0.5 percent in November 2009.

November 2009’s rise was the first year-over-year home price increase in the Denver area since November 2006, according to a Denver Business Journal analysis of Case-Shiller data. Between those months, Denver had 36 straight months of year-over-year price declines.

As recently as early 2009, Denver was showing year-over-year home price declines of 5 percent or more, peaking at a 5.7 percent drop in February 2009.

As far as month-over-month changes, the Denver area saw a 0.6 percent rise in prices in March over the previous month. That followed a 0.8 percent month-over-month decline in prices in February as well as monthly drops in every previous month since September 2009. Before that, prices rose month over month for six straight months.

Read more: Denver home prices up 4.1% from 2009, Case-Shiller Index shows - Denver Business Journal