Congratulations are in order. The perpetually beleaguered resale US housing market managed to show a small advance in data released Thursday, topping estimates which expected a slight decline.

To be sure, the 2% MoM gain was nothing to write, err, home about. But this is a series where anything that’s not a decline counts as a win.

As the figure below reminds you, this situation’s a picture of hopelessness.

It’s been years since this market was any semblance of lively. Although inventories are improving, the affordability math overshot to such a degree that any concessions scarce buyers can wring from sellers are far short of what’s necessary to make the math work.

NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun, silver lining expert, tried to put a positive spin on things, “The ever-so-slight improvement in housing affordability is inching up home sales,” he said Wednesday. “Wage growth is now comfortably outpacing home price growth, and buyers have more choices.”

That’s all fine and good, but the proof’s in the pudding, as the old saying goes, and what still sluggish sales can’t tell you, builder sentiment can. Wednesday’s data came on the heels of another poor read on builder moods and a lackluster snapshot of single-family housing starts.

Notably, prices are starting to reflect a seller-buyer imbalance which Redfin puts at half a million. The median existing home price last month was $422,400, the NAR said. That was just 0.2% higher versus the same month a year ago.

As the figure shows, it looks as though we’re one or two months away from annual price declines.

“Near-zero growth in home prices suggests that roughly half the country is experiencing price reductions,” Yun went on.

Again, these are potentially constructive developments which could, if sustained, unfreeze the market. But my sense is that it’s going to be a very long time before US housing looks anything like “normal.”

So long, perhaps, that we won’t even recognize “normal” when it finally returns.