Housing Market Recovery Expected to Continue in the New Year

This December is not just a season of giving for families, it's a joyous season for home builders and home buyers across the country as improving housing markets now number 201 as of December. This surge by 76 to 201 is based on data collected by the National Association of Home Builders/First American Improving Markets Index (IMI) released earlier this month. This index tracks metro areas showing improvement over a minimum of six consecutive months in housing permits, employment and housing prices. While 84 new metro areas were added to the list only eight were dropped. Areas represented on this index are geographically diverse from the East Coast, North East, Midwest, and South East. The Chairman of NAHB, Barry Rutenberg notes that this is an important sign of stability in the slow recovery. With this being the fourth consecutive month of upward trends amongst housing starts and builder confidence in accordance with the IMI and shows improvement in well over half of metropolitan areas across the nation, NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe says, "In general, we expect the overall housing recovery to continue expanding in 2013." As markets continue to improve and both consumer and builder confidence are on the upswing, these are all indications that the housing recovery is now firmly underway. More and more home buyers are getting off the fence and taking the initiative to jump into the improving housing market. For more information on the IMI and NAHB please visit www.nahb.org./imi.