Us Economy: Signs of recovery in housing market

WASHINGTON: The battered US housing market looks to be on the mend, as buyers make a tentative return and house prices stabilise. “The housing market is slowly coming back. It’s still a depressed market, but it’s getting better. We have a long way to go,” said Patrick Newport, an economist at Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts. New home sales slipped 1.6% to a seasonally adjusted 313,000-unit annual rate in February, the lowest since October, but were up 11.4% in year-on-year terms, the Commerce Department said. The median new home price jumped 8.3% to an eight-month high of $233,700. Compared with February last year, the rise was 6.2%. The report rounded off a week of mixed US housing data and followed a similar pattern seen in the bigger market. Realtors say they are seeing higher traffic volume and are moving more houses off the market than a few years ago.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 25^th, 2012.