But the D-FW area’s showing in the National Association of Realtor’s new metropolitan home price comparison may have as much to do with what’s selling as prices.

During the second quarter D-FW’s median home resale prices rose by 1.7 percent, the Realtors association said Wednesday. That compares with a 1.5 percent decline for the entire nation.

Dallas-Fort Worth was among the roughly two-thirds of the markets the Realtors surveyed that showed home sales price gains from last year.

But details may bedevil those numbers.

Sales of low and moderate price homes in North Texas have declined significantly this year while purchases of higher priced houses have soared.

The number of mortgage applications grew last week despite a credit crunch currently impacting the lending industry, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported today.

The market composite index, which measures total home loan application volume, was up 3.4 percent last week on a seasonally adjusted basis from the week before. Leading the uptick in activity was the index that tracks loans for new purchases, which rose 3.9 percent during the period, followed by the refinance index, which increased 2.6 percent.

About 65 percent of metro areas tracked by the National Association of Realtors had median resale single-family home-price gains in the second quarter compared to the same quarter last year, though prices dropped 1.5 percent nationwide and the sales rate slid 10.8 percent, according to data released today.

The association reported that total existing-home sales, including single-family homes and condos, fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.91 million units in the second quarter compared with 6.63 million in second-quarter 2006. This rate is based on the projection of a monthly total over a 12-month period, adjusted to account for seasonal variations in sales activity.

KKR Financial Holdings LLC — a former real estate investment trust that is attempting to liquidate its residential mortgage assets — said it lost $40 million selling off $5.1 billion in residential mortgage loans and could lose its entire $200 million stake in its remaining mortgage-backed securities.

The recent sale of $5.1 billion in residential mortgage loans and related interest-rate swaps left the San Francisco-based company with $5.8 billion in mortgage loans, mostly in the form of residential mortgage backed securities (MBS). Those securities are financed primarily by non-recourse, asset-backed secured liquidity note facilities, with the company’s equity in those notes totaling $200 million.

Losses continued to mount for former Alt-A lender Impac Mortgage Holdings Inc., hitting $152 million during the second quarter, up 25 percent from $122 million the previous quarter.

Losses for the year to date for the Irvine, Calif.-based lender totaled $274.2 million, compared with $111.9 million in net earnings in the first six months of 2006.

Impac Mortgage, a real estate investment trust (REIT), blamed its growing losses on a $133.6 million increase in provision for loan losses as a result of higher delinquencies, plus a $12.4 million charge-off for the impairment of goodwill and an $8.5 million increase in the loss provision for foreclosed properties.