From Bloomberg:

The housing market is showing progress two years after the credit crunch drove down home prices, though it’s too soon to “declare victory,” Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said.

“It is too early to certainly declare victory,” Donovan said in an interview for Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend. He said prices picked up over the last year and Americans added $1.1 trillion in equity to their homes.

Pending home sales rose an unexpected 5.2 percent in July, the National Association of Realtors reported yesterday. Seasonally adjusted pending sales had dropped 2.8 percent in June and almost 30 percent in May.

When President Barack Obama came into office, “what was driving the housing market was bad loans, today it’s unemployment,” Donovan said.

The administration is putting more emphasis on affordable rental housing and less on homeownership as Obama and Congress work to stabilize home prices and rebuild the U.S. mortgage- finance system, Donovan said.

“We do need to rebalance our priorities,” Donovan said. “Part of that, frankly, is that we have a president who talks about rental housing and is focused on rental housing as an important part of the equation.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-03/too-early-to-declare-victory-as-housing-revives-donovan-says.html

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