Any time I see a 74 percent jump in anything, I hear alarm bells, so when the Treasury Department reported just that big a jump in its Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program, I figured there had to be something really big behind it.

And I was wrong.

There’s nothing big behind it, in fact there’s something very small behind it: Small numbers.

HAFA provides financial incentives for servicers and borrowers to do short sales (selling the property for less than the value of the mortgage) and deeds in lieu of foreclosure (basically just giving the property back to the bank). The program launched in April of 2010 and was later streamlined in December, 2010, based on feedback from mortgage servicers, real estate agents and homeowners.

So far, HAFA has completed 7,113 short sales or DIL’s. In April, however, HAFA saw 1,666 completed, up 74 percent from the 959 done in March.

Why the jump?

“It’s too early to draw broad conclusions,” says Treasury spokesman Andrea Risotto, noting that Treasury just began reporting the numbers two months ago. She also points to a long reporting lag because the short sale process still takes so long. But none of this is the story. The 74 percent jump exists because the numbers are just so small, and that’s the story. HAFA is doing a relatively miniscule number of short sales, when you compare the program to what the big banks are doing on their own.

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As our week-long Spring Realty Check draws to a close here in Chicago, I’m struggling to come up with a fundamental conclusion.

The trouble of course is that the Spring season isn’t over, and the housing and mortgage markets are facing so many unknowns that any conclusion would be ridiculous.

The one thing I can surmise, after talking to real estate industry types from Boston to Seattle and in between, is that housing is not roaring back right now, and may in fact be double-dipping,

We’ve already seen home prices take a turn for the worse again, but sales seemed to be picking up in January. Unfortunately that may have been short-lived. While all real estate is local, the sales numbers are not encouraging. RE/MAX just reported February home sales down 3 percent annually.

“This is the first time in four months that the year-to-year sales difference was not better than the previous month,” according to the report. Sales were up month to month, but not by much.

New construction isn’t faring much better. The home builders reported a slight tick up in sentiment this week, but that was all based on future expectations, not current sales and traffic.

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