The battered housing market appears to be on the mend, with sales climbing nationally and prices leveling off, even rising in some spots.
But swelling unemployment and the related delinquencies and foreclosures threaten to upend these gains, industry experts said.
"That’s a huge cloud hanging over the housing market," said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance. "We can no longer blame the problems on bad mortgage products. It’s now about people losing their jobs, and that’s an even tougher problem for the government to address."
For now, the pickup in home sales is largely driven by buyers rushing to take advantage of near-record-low interest rates, a recently enacted temporary tax credit for first-time home buyers and the rock-bottom prices in areas hit hard by foreclosures. As buyers snap up deals, the excess supply of homes is shrinking, which is helping stabilize prices.
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