As has been stated here many times, the median doesn’t tell you much without the sample size and standard deviation. But a rising median can mean that more higher priced homes are selling — but that doesn’t mean that people are necessarily making money! For example, let’s say that someone’s been trying to sell their home for $500K for 6 months but in Feb 09 they were finally forced to accept an offer of $400K and lost money in the process. The sale set a new low comp in their neighborhood, yet it will influence the median upward. Are home prices going up? Nope, in fact they went down! What changed was the mix of the homes being sold.
Again I don’t know exactly what is happening, but someone with access to the raw data could tell you. My guess is that it’s the scenario I described above.