housing prices still substantially artificially high

Bah.

The housing market has turned—at last.

The U.S. finally has moved beyond attention-grabbing predictions from housing "experts" that housing is bottoming. The numbers are now convincing.

I love how people look at a "market" where the distortions are ridiculously large, to the point of overpowering everything else, se a small uptick and say "the numbers are now convincing."

What am I talking about?  Let's just look at the mortgage rate -- 3.5%.

Now let's look at a prototypical $200,000 loan for 30 years at 3.5%.  This produces a payment of $895.48.

How much house does $895.48 buy if rates go up to a more-normal 6%?

Answer: $150,104.

So you think housing has "bottomed" eh?  That's very nice.  You have an imputed 25% valuation increase in the price of houses today that will, over time, go away.

This is something that nobody talks about, except me.  I've brought this up repeatedly -- you want to buy houses when rates are historically high, not low, because then when rates go down you get the imputed increase.

In this case you're buying the already-applied imputed increase, which means you are buying an embedded 25% over-valuation compared against historically-reasonable 30 year money rates.

Bottom?  Maybe for a little while.  But distorted markets always, eventually, correct back to the mean -- or more.