I got several emails today and they were all forwarding me the same article. Home sales up. Give me a break, wait til they lift the foreclosure moratoriums and watch the banks ramp up foreclosure proceedings. Even worse banks are maintaining terrible balance sheets at the moment to qualify for TARP funds. Wait til we run out of TARP finds and banks get back to business rather than working on making their balance sjeets look terrible. See article highlight below, what a joke

The housing market performed miserably in 2008, but the final month of the year showed an upside surprise in sales of previously-owned homes against expectations of a third consecutive monthly decline.

The pace of existing home sales jumped 6.5% in December, boosting the annual pace of sales up to a 12-month high of 4.74 million. November's data was revised down to a pace of 4.45 million units, which marked a 9.4% reduction in sales compared to October.