Residential Housing Ready to Awaken?

By: Albert Bozzo
Senior Features Editor
CNBC

After half a decade of withering sales and slumping prices, there are strong and diverse signs that the single-family housing market is poised for a rebound.

In some metropolitan areas, the market has bottomed, with both sales and prices on the rise and foreclosures on the decline.

This contrarian — and largely overlooked — thesis flies in the face of the persistent gloom that has nagged the industry since 2007, when the subprime crisis flared.

Industry analysts and players cite a number of reasons — some traditional (employment), others unique to the post-credit bubble era (foreclosures) — for the long-awaited sea change. An analysis of industry and government data also support the forecast. [Continue Reading…]