Assessing the state of the U.S. real estate market is not an easy task. Each month brings a mountain of new data to be compiled, analyzed and interpreted. Often times, it is hard to distinguish between an emerging trend and a temporary anomaly. And then there is the matter of separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, when spinsters massage the data to support whatever conclusion they would like you to believe. As the saying goes, “consider the source.”

With this in mind, we turn to one of the more reliable sources in the real estate industry: the National Association of Realtors’ Research Department. Each month, the NAR publishes a special report, called the “Realtors Confidence Index” (RCI), which discusses the outlook for the residential real estate market based on certain leading indicators. The recently published June, 2012 edition offers a surprisingly positive outlook based on a survey of over 3,400 Realtors nationwide. According to the June report, the overall market is recovering based on improvements in sales and price.

Click here to read the full article >