Housing Bulls

If upbeat comments and optimistic forecasts are a sign of a housing upturn, the upturn is just about here. The Federal Reserve’s Beige Book – the Fed’s survey of the economy published before each meeting of the FOMC, the Fed’s policy group, was released on Wednesday October 10th.  The summary comments, “Residential real estate showed widespread improvement since the last report. All tweleve Districts reported existing home sales strengthened, in some cases substantially. Selling prices were steady or rising… declining or tight inventories have put upward pressure on prices…New Home construction and sales were more mixed but still improved.”

Writing in the Financial Times, Roger Altman (former deputy Treasury secretary) was more bullish than the Fed, “that turn in the [housing] market is occurring now and it should become a boom by 2015. It will be powerful enough, together with rising oil and gas production and other factors, to lift the entire US economy.”