US home-buying season finally signaling a recovery
(04-15) 07:01 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --
Five years after the U.S. housing bust sent sales and prices plunging, the spring home-buying season is pointing to a long-awaited recovery.
Reduced prices, record-low mortgage rates, higher rents and an improving job market appear to be emboldening many would-be buyers. Open houses are drawing crowds. A wave of foreclosures is leading investors to grab bargain-priced homes.
And many people seem to have concluded that prices won't drop much further. In some areas, prices have begun to tick up.
Interviews with more than two dozen potential buyers, sellers, brokers, Realtors and economists suggest that confidence is up and that sales will move slowly but steadily higher.
'The biggest challenge that we've had over the past four years is fear — fear that the economy is collapsing, that property values are collapsing, that the world is coming to an end,' says Mark Prather, a broker at ERA Buy America Real Estate in La Palma, Calif. 'The fear factor is all but gone.'
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