Pending home sales rose 21.1% in March over 2009 numbers. The big driver was the expiration of the first time home buyer credit. Contracts had to be signed by the end of March to qualify. Nevertheless, these numbers are encouraging.

The National Association of Realtors' (NAT)' index stood at 102.9, up 5.3% It should be noted that pending sales lead existing sales by one to two months.

Separately, the Commerce Department released their numbers on manufactured goods. Excluding defense, factory orders were up 1.3%. Non defense capital goods, excluding aircraft were up 4.5%

According to an Associated Press survey of leading economists, jobs and home values will stay unstable into 2011. The survey indicates that the recovery is going to continue trudging along through the year, which should prompt the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates near zero. Three-fourths of the economists surveyed believe that the interest rates will stay low until the final quarter of 2010.

Other highlights from the survey (if you can call them highlights) include the belief that the unemployment rate will stay "stubbornly high" during the next two years. The group believes that the unemployment rate will drop to 9.3% by the end of this year and will drop to 8.4% at the end of 2011.

Over the past couple of years, one of the most troubling aspects of the economy has been the ailing housing market, and in particular the large volumes of homes that have fallen victim to the foreclosure crisis. Finally we get some evidence that things may be moving in the right direction again.

While no one will argue that we are out of the woods just yet, it does appear as things are at least starting to recovery slightly.

The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that housing starts rose a bit in September, helped by a rise in single-family home construction, but this bit of good news came with some bad news that applications for new home construction were down in the month.

According to the report, construction of new homes and apartments rose by 0.5% in the month, to an annualized rate of 590,000 units. While any growth for housing starts comes as good news in the current market, it is not as good as it appears at first glance, considering that analysts had been expecting to see the annualized rate increase to 610,000 units.

A little more good news for the struggling housing market Tuesday, as a closely watched home price index showed increases in prices for the third straight month in July.

The news comes from the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index, which shows that home prices rose by 1.2% from June to July.

Shares of California-based homebuilder KB Home (NYSE: KBH) sold off Friday morning after the company failed to meet analyst estimates for its third quarter.

As we noted in our earnings preview, analysts were expecting to see the company show a loss of 56 cents per share for its third quarter, but the company failed to hit that number, posting an actual loss of a much worse 87 cents per share.