"Housing, confidence gain as economy improves"

Housing, confidence gain as economy improves

by Tim Mullaney at USA Today

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/12/31/economy-consumer-confidence-house-prices/4260659/

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Separately, the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index rose 0.2% from September to October. Monthly price gains slowed in 18 of the 20 cities tracked by the index, Prices have risen 13.6% over the past 12 months, the fastest since Feb. 2006, S&P-Dow Jones Indices said. The S&P/Case-Shiller index isn't adjusted for seasonal variations, so the change partly reflects slower buying in the fall.

"This is pretty good news -- we're getting back toward the progress we had made in confidence in the spring and summer that was derailed by the government shutdown,'' said Lynn Franco, director of economic indicators at the Conference Board ."It's still a somewhat cautious consumer. But looking at big ticket items like cars and houses, there's a willingness to spend developing."

The weak spot in the consumer survey was that consumers have a relatively dim view of their ability to get pay increases
, but even those results were stronger in December than in recent surveys, Franco said.

The Conference Board index is designed to compare confidence over time. A reading of 100 would mean that confidence was as high as it was in 1985, a year when the economy grew 4.2%, about twice the 2013 pace.




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