Housing Starts Rose in August

Today brought three major pieces of housing data. Housing starts were at 750,000 for the year, up 2.3 percent from July 2012 and 29 percent from August 2011. Sales of existing homes were up 7.8 percent from July and 9.3 percent from August of last year, hitting an annualized rate of 4.82 million, according to the National Association of Realtors. Finally, the median home price is at $187,500, a 9.5 percent year-over-year bump. This is the first time since early 2006 that there have been six straight months of price increases, and the August price jump was the biggest since January 2006.