The housing market may have "stabilized" from last month to this month,  but looking at year over year, housing starts are down 46%. The same holds true for permits down 52% from last year.

Even though rising home equity is up in other countries, home foreclosure filings are up in the U.S.

All unwelcomed signs the U.S. economy isn't rebounding.

Who cares what the housing starts are it all depends when the banks shadow inventory comes on to the market. If they had not changed the accounting rules they would be insolvent or hurting much worse than they are. The government or the bankjs will just look away for quite awhile untill housing starts to go up and the banks slowly trickle ouy that shadow inventory they are sitting on.

"shadow inventory" makes an interesting point, but I really don't believe these folks will be able to hang onto non-performing investments like foreclosures too long. The banks will have to put properties on the market for whatever they can get, after some period of time. Maybe they will hang onto a few, but for the most part they need to turn them back into cash, even at a big loss.

All this notwithstanding, I do believe we are going to bounce along for at least a year or so at the housing bottom. Maybe even go lower, before a very very slow improvement begins. Mortgage $ has to stay cheap, jobs have to come back, and banks have to loosen up credit reqs a bit. Then we can talk housing recovery.

I personally think the housing market will bottom-out, price-wise, in early 2011, and we will see something of a recovery during the spring selling season of 2011.

There are simply too many houses out there and too many people looking for work.

And, I don't see housing appreciation at a double-digit rate for many years to come, but maybe that is a good thing.

I really think the market is going to keep declining for a while or until the Banks decide what to do or to perform since they received the Bail out money from the Government. They have not done anything consistently yet and until that does not happen will see the housing market even falling more. Someone has to put a pressure on them to stop foreclosures. That is really hurting the economy.

The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling!

My S/O and I are relocating to the Washington DC area, and have encountered some interesting (ie: frustrating) short sell situations. For example, we found a house in VA that we both loved that was a bargain at $249,000 for the asking price. When we contacted the realtor about the property, we were informed that they had shown the house for a total of two days, in which time 100 people walked through, 30 placed an offer, and three of those offers were guaranteed sales.

The real estate agent told us that the present owner of the home (I believe it is a bank) appears to be holding out for the best offer.... Who knows when that might come?? And how are we ever going to find a decent, affordable home when the banks aren't taking the first/tenth/hundredth offer they get because they think they can hold out for more??

It's still all about greed~~ no matter how bad things seem to be, greed is one thing you can't easily kill...

Banks trying to maintain a healthy balance sheet, and getting the most they can for a distressed property is not greed; it's just good business.  No one would expect any less of a private seller.

The problem with the realestate market is it is highly dependant on your location. My neighborhood has a very small inventory and houses are starting to get multiple offers even though I wouldn't touch some of the houses with a 10 foot pole. As a result the price per square foot has started to rise for my neighborhood while 15 minutes across town the prices are still going down. There isn't really any empty houses and most of the owners have lived in them for decades (original owners). I don't think we will see big rises in home values but slow and steady increase.

I live in Central New York.  Our homes are being bought by companies based in Long Island and California.  Why?  They are picking up cheap property.  In comparison to their homebase, Central New York is 20% of the price.