Housing prices are not in another free fall.

At least not yet.

"You don't have a double dip from our perspective. You just have a lot of worried people," said Paul Blitzer, managing director and chairman of the Price Index Committee responsible for the Standard & Poors Case-Shiller Home Price Index.

This is a widely watched market indicator released each month that tracks repeat sales of previously owned houses in major markets across the country. The index for the L.A. area also includes Orange County.

The last index prompted lots of housing-market experts to to sound off about a double dip.

Not according to S&P's definition, though.

Blitzer said the committee defines a double dip as when home prices fall under the low point of the Great Recession.

"So far we have not seen that happen," he said. "Everybody has their own definition of a double dip and 9 out of 10 of them change it every 10 minutes or so."

In the case of Los Angeles/Orange County area, the index reached a low of 159.18 in May of 2009, Blitzer said. The most current index for January came in at 169.88.

The area is 11.7 points above the low.

January's index for Los Angeles did decline 1.8 percent from a year ago.

The index is a complicated mathematical formula that analyzes prices and allows for variables like the size and price range of home sales.

There is something else going on, but it hasn't gotten much attention. Housing markets tend to be local and go their own way.

But during the meltdown all the markets collapsed, moving as one with prices and sales falling.

"We are getting back to the really local one," Blitzer said of the nation's market character. "That's a sign that the crisis, in terms of real estate, has shifted."

Economist Brad Kemp, director of regional research at Beacon Economics, doesn't see a double price dip coming here, either.

Prices will trend up and down on a monthly and annual basis going forward for a while.

"We have to consider this all a part of the same dip. Prices haven't found a bottom yet. That said, we're not going to slide much further," Kemp noted.

There is market malaise to deal with first.

"There is not a lot of demand in the market for homes. Who's got equity? Who's got a 20 percent down payment?" he said. "So I don't know why we should be surprised or make a big deal out of it. It's just a continuation of the same problem and nothing more."

Economist William W. Roberts, director of the San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center at California State University, Northridge, said the market behaved in typical fashion for the first two months of the year.

"I don't see that," Roberts said of the double dip.

And January and February sales levels were so low it's hard to get a read on where prices are going.

"There is a lot of worry out there but there doesn't seem to be any underlying economic force that's going to be driving prices down," he said.