Posted by Leonard Steinberg on November 19th, 2012

The economy’s recovery is largey reliant on the housing market recovery, so today’s news from The National Association of Realtors  that existing home sales climbed 2.1 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.79 million units, beating forecasts by Wall Street economists, comes as good news.

Strengthening demand for new homes drove an increase in a monthly measure of home builder sentiment, which hit a more than six-year high in November. Rising home prices and a faster pace of sales have shown the housing market has finally turned the corner this year. The market collapsed when a mortgage debt bubble burst in 2006, helping trigger the 2007-09 recession. With the US economy extremely reliant on housing, this is certainly encouraging news for the jobs market too: in New York the volume of construction sites is growing rapidly, with a massive boom expected in the first half of 2013….soon we will see a shortage of skilled labor and materials.

The data to-daysuggested the recovery in housing is advancing even faster than many analysts had expected. Watch Home Depot stock climb…. the real estate bug is back!