The US housing market, and the Boston area in particular, have likely reached bottom and will slowly start to recover this year, according to Harvard University researchers who are scheduled to release an annual housing report Thursday.

More than six years after the country’s housing market pitched into a deep slide, Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies said a recent increase in home sales, coupled with low ­inventories of available properties and rising rents point to a turnaround in housing prices.

“There are lots of positive indicators here,’’ said Eric S. Belsky, managing director of the housing center. “A floor is beginning to form under home prices.”

The center’s 2012 report, scheduled to be released Thursday at the Ford Foundation in New York City, contrasts with the forecast it released last year in which Harvard accurately predicted the US housing market would remain sluggish through 2011 as potential buyers remained on the sidelines out of fear prices would continue to fall and the economy still struggled.

For this year, Harvard researchers’ view of the Boston area is even brighter, primarily because the local economy is in relatively better shape than elsewhere in the country, and housing values did not fall as much. The online brokerage firm Redfin reported Wednesday that Boston-­area home sales increased by 21.5 percent and median prices jumped 5.5 percent in May compared with the month before — significantly higher than the United States.

“We are definitely going to be in front of the trend,’’ said ­Alex Coon, market manager for Redfin in Boston. “I think 2012 is going to be the base that the recovery for housing is built on.”