First in a four-part series.

Six months ago, with the economy on the skids, Mark Wintz and Bruce Evans made an expensive bet on economic recovery. They moved to Sacramento to open a home building venture at McClellan Park.

"We looked at the West Coast and decided Sacramento was the best location," said Wintz, a custom builder from Ventura. "It's on the 80 and the 5, with access to the Bay Area and the Sierra, up and down the Valley and access to Oregon and Washington."

It was a leap of faith. Most builders called 2008 the worst year of their professional lives.

But Wintz and Evans have an angle that hints at better days to come in real estate. They believe central cities will be the West's first markets to roar back. When that happens, Details, their McClellan prefab home factory with thousands of square feet of expansion space, will supply a new generation of urban infill housing.

"We wanted to enter near the bottom and be prepared for an emerging market, one that you can grow with," said Wintz.

On the surface, this startup seems a reassuring signal from a battered business world that this, too, will pass. These are some of the darkest economic days in generations, yet Wintz's and Evans' $4 million investment points to a key element that some say may lead to an eventual recovery: a resurgent real estate market, the same real estate market that sent the economy into a deep tailspin.

"One bright note is that the (housing) sector that led the economy into this morass is about to turn the corner, perhaps as soon as this summer, and will start to lead us out," said Scott Anderson, senior economist at Wells Fargo & Co.

It's still too early to declare real estate's revival. And others will argue forcefully that consumer debt, the collapse of esoteric global financial instruments and the abrupt and almost unprecedented freezing of credit have created an immense disaster far beyond real estate's reach.

But 2008 could also be seen as the year Sacramento-area real estate began to show signs of stabilizing, and the idea that housing might help establish a foundation for the economy here is something experts are starting to debate. Prices and inventory are down and sales are up, even as foreclosures continue. Mortgage rates have fallen to their lowest levels in at least 37 years. The correction has been enormously painful, but there are believers who contend Sacramento will be among the first U.S. markets to recover.

• Supply is down. It would take 3.9 months to sell today's nearly 11,000 listings in Sacramento County and West Sacramento. A year ago: 12.2 months.

• Sales are up. After 37 months of declines in the region, something new began in April: eight months of year-over-year sales gains. Prices better match area salaries.

• Conservative lending and safe loans are back. Nine in 10 California mortgages this year had fixed rates, according to the California Association of Realtors. At the height of the boom, two-thirds of all new mortgages in California were loans with adjustable rates. The new lending portends a stable base of homeowners.

But not even the most optimistic forecasters see housing as the ultimate solution to all that's wrong with the local, state or national economies. We're beyond the point when a single sector – even one so pivotal as home sales – can alone propel the financial sector to new heights.

• American households have lost $10 trillion in the collapse of the stock market and the plunge in home values, according to Merrill Lynch economist Sheryl King.

• More than 2 million people nationwide have lost their jobs this year, and many of those still working are fearful and cutting their spending. November unemployment in the Sacramento region reached a 15-year high at 8.1 percent; California's tops out at 8.4 percent.

• Banks have dampened the economy by not lending. Until lately, they've been slow to modify mortgages, enabling foreclosures that kicked the economy into a tailspin.

Call The Bee's Jim Wasserman, (916) 321-1102. Read his blog on real estate, Home Front, at www.sacbee.com/blogs.