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While housing recovery has generally been uneven for the last few years, the housing market experienced substantial growth in the fourth quarter of 2014 for all five indicators of Trulia's Q4 2014 Housing Barometer. Trulia has been using the barometer to track how quickly the housing market is returning to normal activity since February 2012.
Three of the five indicators tracked, including existing-home sales, home price levels and delinquency and foreclosure rates, are all more than three-quarters of the way back to normal as of the end of 2014, Trulia reported. While new construction and millennial employment continue to lag behind the other metrics, they also improved in the last year, each recovering to about half of their normal levels.
A first-look reading of the University of Michigan/Thomson Reuters consumer confidence index shows the measure climbed to 98.2 as of mid-January, up nearly five points from a final December reading of 93.6. According to the group conducting the confidence survey, January's increase, which lifted the index to its highest level since 2004, was driven by an improvement in personal finances, with more consumers reporting increases in household income than any time in the past decade. They're also more optimistic about the labor outlook as job growth continues on a steady track.
