Home is where the heart is — and, perhaps, a mother lode of profits for institutional investors who have banked on the single-family housing sector. They have to be feeling pretty good about their strategy after receiving a spate of positive housing reports. Among the numbers provoking exuberance:

•          There was a 12.2 percent jump in U.S. home prices in May compared with a year ago, the biggest gain since March 2006.

•          New home sales in June reached their highest level since May 2008. The seasonally adjusted figure of 497,000 sales nationwide was up 38 percent from the same period last year.

•          Though sales of previously owned houses declined slightly in June, they were still up 15 percent from a year ago.

Kevin Traenkle, a principal of Colony Capital, though hailing the housing market’s re-emergence, says his com