According to the housing affordability index.

 NAHB - builder confidence up

Builder confidence in the market for newly built,
single-family homes rose six points to 57 on the
National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells
Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI). This is the index�s third consecutive monthly
gain and its strongest reading since January of 2006.
�Today�s report is particularly encouraging in that it
shows improvement in builder confidence across every
region as well as solid gains in current sales
conditions, traffic of prospective buyers and sales
expectations for the next six months,� noted NAHB
Chairman Rick Judson, a home builder from Charlotte,
N.C. However, he cautioned that �This positive momentum
could be disrupted by threats on the policy side,
particularly with regard to the mortgage interest
deduction and federal support for the housing finance
system.� �Builders are seeing more motivated buyers
coming through their doors as the inventory of existing
homes for sale continues to tighten,� noted NAHB Chief
Economist David Crowe. �Meanwhile, as the
infrastructure that supplies home building returns,
some previously skyrocketing building material costs
have begun to soften.�

Derived from a monthly survey that NAHB has been
conducting for 25 years, the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing
Market Index gauges builder perceptions of current
single-family home sales and sales expectations for the
next six months as �good,� �fair� or �poor.� The survey
also asks builders to rate traffic of prospective
buyers as �high to very high,� �average� or �low to
very low.� Scores from each component are then used to
calculate a seasonally adjusted index where any number
over 50 indicates that more builders view conditions as
good than poor. All three HMI components posted gains
in July. The component gauging current sales conditions
rose five points to 60 � its highest level since early
2006. Meanwhile, the component gauging sales
expectations in the next six months gained seven points
to 67 and the component gauging traffic of prospective
buyers rose five points to 45 � marking the strongest
readings for each since late 2005. All four regions
also posted gains in their HMI scores� three-month
moving averages. The Northeast showed a four-point gain
to 40 while the Midwest reported an eight-point gain to
54, the South posted a five-point gain to 50 and the
West measured a three-point gain to 51.