The housing market keepsreporting good news. Sales volumes have risen, as has newconstruction activity. Even real estate prices, after falling foryears at a frightening pace, have begun to firm. The whole pictureis a welcome change from the steep slide and stark fears of pastyears, and it promises, at long last, that housing will contributegoing forward to the economy's overall health, at least marginallyso. But it would be a mistake to read too much into suchnews. The real estate sector still has much to overcome. If therecent flow of data offers reasonable assurances that the worst isover, remaining impediments will contain future gains in housing.Still, gains, even when contained, are a vast improvement over thefree fall of recent years.

The general picture certainly is upbeat. The Commerce Departmentreports new home sales jumped almost 9.7% during the first sevenmonths of the year, and the National Association of Realtorsreports existing home sales rose 2.1%. Neither measure registered again in every month, but it is clear that the long decline in homesales has ended. There is good reason to look for sales support,too. Low mortgage rates and past declines in prices have madehousing much more affordable than at the last cyclical peak, moreaffordable nationally, in fact, than any time since the early1990s. Certainly homebuilders have taken the turn to heart. Evenwith a June pullback in new housing units started, this kind ofconstruction activity shows a gain of almost 8% during the firsthalf of the year.

Also encouraging, especially after the intense financial pain of2008-09 and its aftermath in 2010 and 2011, is the recent rise inresidential real estate prices. The popular Case-Shiller HousingPrice index reports that its composite of prices in 20 majormetropolitan areas gained every month this year through June, themost recent period for which it has data. Each month showed only amodest advance, but the net increase amounted to 4.7%, or nearly10% at an annual rate. That is a far cry from the 4.1% drop lastyear and much steeper declines in 2010 and earlier. Perhaps mostencouraging is the regional pattern. All but three of the 20metropolitan areas showed price gains. New York City wasessentially flat, while Atlanta showed a 1.9% annualized decline,and Detroit a 4.7% decline. Meanwhile, formerly hard-hit Las Vegasshowed an 8.6% annualized gain, Miami a 16.1% gain, and Phoenix a30.4% average annualized home price gain.