As we ease into the slower summer months, it seems Connecticut’s housing recovery is keeping pace with the weather – it may be getting warmer, but it’s still sluggish. Month-over-month, the number of single-family home sales is rising, but not keeping pace with last year, according to data from The Warren Group, publisher of The Commercial Record.

It’s been a year of highs and lows so far. Single-family home sales dropped nearly 8 percent in April 2014 compared to last year, and were down almost 14 percent year-over-year in May. However, the number of sales has risen each successive month since February. The median price has risen 15 percent since March.

The condo market is even bumpier, with a drop of 7 percent year-over-year in April and flat in May, and the median price dropping $5,700 between April and May of 2014, even as the total number of sales climbs steadily.

Nationally, the picture is not much brighter: the Mortgage Bankers Association reports mortgage applications for new home purchases decreased by 5 percent in June compared with May; data firm CoreLogic said home prices nationwide rose just 1.4 percent in May compared to April; and a recent report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University found that while the U.S. housing recovery should regain its footing, it also faces a number of challenges, including tight credit, elevated unemployment and mounting student loan debt.

At the end of June, Paul Pouliot, vice president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston, spoke to a group of mortgage bankers at the Mid-Year Mortgage Update and Conference, held in Woburn, Mass., and sponsored in part by The Warren Group. He warned that five years after the great crash, and more than two years into the supposed recovery of the market, lenders are still navigating a rocky course with many dangerous obstacles ahead.

“It’s been five years since we entered the abyss of this recession … over the past few years we have seen an abundance of laws and regulations passed to curb the worst of the excess,” Pouliot said, but problems remain.

Though new Federal Housing Finance Agency director Mel Watt introduced reforms that have provided some relief to the lenders, high loan guarantee fees, fear of buybacks and the unhealed wounds of the crisis still plague the mortgage market, keeping private investors on the sidelines.

In particular, the impasse between lenders and investors on the issue of “reps and warranties” – the contractual terms which define the difference between bad and good loans, and which party in the contract will be forced to absorb the loss if a loan defaults – is still making investors wary.

So while Connecticut, and the country, limps along through this slow recovery, take comfort in the fact that this is, after all, New England – and if you don’t like the weather – or the housing market – wait a minute. It will change.