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Tuesday, June 26, 2012

The Housing Bust Is Over

CHART OF THE DAY: The Housing Bust Is Over

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Tuesday, June 26, 2012

The Housing Bust Is Over

It's time for people to accept it, the housing bust is over.

Today's Case-Shiller house price report helped confirm it.

On a sequential basis, house prices rose 0.67%. On an annualized basis, house prices only fell 1.9%, which is far better than the expectation of a 2.50%.

And the more you dig into the report, the better it looks.

Here are some datapoints from the report:

19 out of 20 cities saw gains.
18 out of 20 cities saw an improvement in annual returns.
There were no cities where house prices hit brand new lows.

What's more, it's not just this housing index that's showing improvement.

Other indices such as the FHFA House Price Index have shown gains as well.

Furthermore, other non-price measures of housing are looking good. New Home Sales have hit a 2-year high, for example.

In a post on home sales, Bill McBride at Calculated Risk(who has more credibility on this subject than anyone) said yesterday:

It might be hard to believe, but earlier this year there was a debate on whether housing had bottomed. That debate is over - clearly new home sales have bottomed – and the debate is now about the strength of the recovery. Although sales are still historically very weak, sales are up 35% from the low, and up about 24% from the May 2010 through September 2011 average.

So all the forces are rowing int he same direction: Sales and prices are both starting to move up.

The housing bust is over.

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	Also On Money Game Today:
	DAVID ROSENBERG: The Housing Bust Isn't Over, We've Got 2 Or 3 More Years Of Pain HOUSE PRICES SURGE PAST EXPECTATIONS, RISING 0.67% What Wall Street Analysts Are Buzzing About This Morning REPORT: There Is A Plan In Congress To Delay The Fiscal Cliff