re: Case-Shiller: Home prices fall in January

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I saw were building permits jumped 5.1% from Jan 2011 to January 2012 (from 682,000 to 717,000). This is the first increase of this size since 2008.

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Talking about this? In case you don't know, I direct you to the "Explanatory Paragraph" at the bottom of the press release:

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EXPLANATORY NOTES
In interpreting changes in the statistics in this release, note that month-to-month changes in seasonally adjusted statistics often show movements which may be irregular. It may take 2 months to establish an underlying trend for building permit authorizations, 4 months for total starts, and 5 months for total completions. The statistics in this release are estimated from sample surveys and are subject to sampling variability as well as nonsampling error including bias and variance from response, nonreporting, and undercoverage. Estimated relative standard errors of the most recent data are shown in the tables. Whenever a statement such as “2.5 percent(±3.2%) above” appears in the text, this indicates the range (-0.7 to +5.7 percent) in which the actual percent change is likely to have occurred. All ranges given for percent changes are 90-percent confidence intervals and account only for sampling variability. If a range does not contain zero, the change is statistically significant. If it does contain zero, the change is not statistically significant; that is, it is uncertain whether there was an increase or decrease. The same policies apply to the confidence intervals for percent changes shown in the tables. On average, the preliminary seasonally adjusted estimates of total building permits, housing starts and housing completions are revised about three percent or less. Explanations of confidence intervals and sampling variability can be found on our web site listed above.

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Just saying, those numbers move around a lot to try and take anything out of a one month data point.

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Also, I've been looking at real estate stocks (from REIT's to home builders etc) and they have done very well since October with some having doubled in 3-4 months.

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Well the S&P as a whole is up 1416.51/1131.42-1 = 25% in that time frame and every report I saw from homebuilders (Lennar, Beazer, KB) was shite, so I'm not sure I believe that market movement is worth anything. REITs are so levered to begin with any movement in the market is going to be amplified there, up or down, so again not sure I put much stock in that market performance as some kind of forward-looking indicator.

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I think real estate is going to do very well over the next 5 years.

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It certainly may, although that's depending on your definition of "very well." Not falling year over year or simply moving up 2 or 3 percent annualized isn't "very well" IMO. If you're banking on bubble-type moves again I would love to hear your hypothesis there.