One Year Later: Housing hits bottom?

A year after the global financial and credit markets melted down, the U.S. housing market is in a good-news, bad-news equilibrium. The good news: prices in many markets have fallen to pre-bubble valuations, home values nationally have stabilized, sales are rising, mortgage rates are low and loans are readily available to qualified buyers.

The bad news: as I recently described here, the foreclosure "pipeline" -- mortgages that are delinquent or in default--is full: since the "cure rate" of those homeowners who get current on their late payments has plummeted, the majority of these mortgages will enter the foreclosure process.