“The deeply depressed housing sector finally seems to have found its bottom — and may even be starting to bounce back.
A wide range of housing indicators — construction, home sales, prices — have stabilized in the past few months, although they remain at historically very low levels. And it looks as if construction activity in particular will pick up in 2012.
The latest evidence of the momentum — new-housing starts for November — was released Tuesday. The surprising 9.3 percent gain bumped the rate of new-housing construction to its highest level in 19 months, to a rate of 685,000 new units a year. The number of building permits issued for new houses and apartments also rose, to 5.7 percent in November.”