Some good news from the housing market in the past few weeks:

• Groundbreaking for new homes rose 2.8% to an annual rate of 591,000 units, reversing the prior month’s drop, a report from the Commerce Department showed on Wednesday.
• Over the past 12 months, housing starts have surged 21.1%, the largest increase since April 2004, the Commerce Department report showed.
• In summer 2009, the seasonally adjusted S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index rose for the first time in almost two years. Since May 2009, the index has risen by over 3%, suggesting that the necessary correction to U.S. residential home prices is nearing an end.
• The national median existing-home price for all housing types was $178,300 in December 2009, which is 1.5% higher than December 2008, according to the National Association of Realtors.
• For all of 2009, there were 5,156,000 existing-home sales, which was 4.9% higher than the 4,913,000 transactions recorded in 2008; it was the first annual sales gain since 2005, according to the National Association of Realtors.