The housing market is on the mend: a Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller report released yesterday shows home prices rising for six consecutive months, a sign economists are heralding as the beginning of a sustainable recovery for the housing market. In a survey of 20 metropolitan areas, the report showed an increase of 5.9 percent from January through July, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, the housing market's strongest year-to-date gain since pre-bubble days. This is up from 0.4 percent last year and 2 percent in 2010.
The news has encouraging implications for the broader economy, indicating increased consumer confidence, which will result in increased spending in other areas. In addition to adding to the gross domestic product, which home building is expected to do this year for the first time since 2005 (Reuters), each new home going up will create an estimated three jobs.
"Among the cities, Miami and Phoenix are both well off their bottoms with positive monthly gains since the end of 2011," said Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices David M. Blitzer, in a press release. "Many of the markets we follow have seen some decent recovery from their respective lows - San Francisco up 20.4%, Detroit up 19.7%, Phoenix up 17.0% and Minneapolis up 16.5%, to name the top few. These were some of the markets that were hit the hardest when the housing bubble burst in 2006,"
In the New York City area home prices rose by only 1.7 percent.
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