Signs of Hope in the Nation's Housing Market

• March 26th 2009

by Mark Wellborn

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There now appear to be some good economic signs (we couldn’t resist the photo) in various sectors, including the housing market, after months of bad news, The Washington Post is reporting.

Some of those encouraging signs include:

• Newly issued residential building permits were up three percent in February from January.

• Home sales increased 5.1 percent.

• Government data showed that sales of new single-family homes increased 4.7 percent, the first increase in over half a year.

The Post is also reporting that dropping home prices, low mortgage rates and the $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers are all factors that are bringing buyers back into the market.

While that may be good news for the housing sector, the economy on the whole still has a ways to go before it is healthy again. From The Post:

“To be sure, even the most optimistic forecasters said the nation is still deep in recession. Most experts predict that the economy will shrink in the first quarter at an annualized rate of about 5 or 6 percent, similar to the last three months of 2008. The economy continues to shed jobs at a pace of 500,000 to 600,000 a month. And more cuts are likely as businesses, saddled with stockpiles of unsold goods, scale back production.”

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.production.logicbrush.com/articles/blog/signs_of_hope_in_the_nations_housing_market/718.