It’s encouraging to see another month of growth, the third in a row, in today’s May existing home sales report. But beyond that, it offers buyers little good news to grasp onto. Prices were down slightly from last month, but remain very close to all-time highs set in October 2005. Inventory, while up very modestly from April largely thanks to more condos coming up for sale, is still well below a year ago. And the time homes spend on the market has fallen by a week in just one month, to 32 days, making an already hyper-competitive market even more so. Buyers struggling to find an affordable home to buy will continue to do so, even given these very small improvements.