"Housing is clearly recovering," David Blitzer of Standard & Poor told USA Today. Standard & Poor issued their Case-Shiller Index of home sale prices for November. In their review of twenty metropolitan areas, prices rose in all but one area. In the report for October, housing overall saw a 0.1% decline with gains only in ten cities.

The article attributes this in part to that the inventory of unsold homes was 4.4 months, which was the lowest since May 2005. "Any new listings are getting eaten up right away," said E. J. Bowlds, a broker at Coldwell Banker Bain. He is seeing six to ten competing offers on homes in his area of Washington State.