Housing Market Is Not Quite Ready For Boom Time

By many measures, the housing market seems to be in very good shape. The National Association of Realtors reports that contracts to buy existing homes were up 5.5 percent in February, and Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey shows that Americans expect home prices to rise a robust 3.2 percent over the next year. But Bloomberg blogger A. Gary Shilling notes that the market collapse left many homeowners with inadequate credit scores, not enough money for a down payment, and insufficient job security to buy a house. That led to more renters than buyers and single-family housing starts that are still far below the pre-housing bubble average of more than 1 million.

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