Housing bottom premature. The clue? Foreclosure pipeline full

A case could be made that the housing market has bottomed. As my colleague Joseph Lazzaro recently explained in Could the end be in sight? Housing guru Shiller senses home price rebound, there have been three recent improvements:

1. Home prices edged up.

2. Sales of new homes increased.

3. Inventories of new homes declined.

Ready for the buzzkill? Though certainly more positive than the recent trend of declining sales and valuations, these reports fail to take into consideration what's in the housing-market pipeline: more delinquencies and foreclosures, which will increase inventories and depress prices.