Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Still, the essential problem is that we have too many homes for sale relative to how many households are buying those homes. And there are two indicators that economists look at to gauge whether the housing market is improving. One is the number of months of unsold home inventory. Typically, it's around 6 months. In a typical year, we have around 6 months of inventory for sale in the housing market. It got up to a high of 12 months earlier this year. It has backed off a little bit to somewhere between 10 and 11 months, so that's one sign of slight improvement. The other indicator of improvement is to look at existing home sales this year compared to the same time last year. And what we found in the last six months in the nation, existing home sales this year are at a higher level than they were for the same period last year. They're still not very high, but they're moving in the right direction. So these are two indicators that suggest there is some glimmer of hope in the housing market - which is actually crucial to get the economy back on track - but certainly we still have issues."