Based on current sales figures, the U.S. housing market is having a wonderful time. Prices of existing homes show gains of 3.5% or more since April, and numbers of homes sold are 15% above the lows set in November of last year. Even experts as knowledgeable as Robert Case, of the famed S&P/Case Shiller index, were surprised by the resilience of the housing market over this last year.

When it comes to real estate, everybody is an expert. And why not? We all have to live someplace, and real estate’s former successes and current woes have held a dominant position in the news since at least 2003. As a result, along with basketball, golf, and bowling, real estate has become one of our foremost participant sports. After all, just about anyone with an income and a decent credit rating can play the game.

Wall Street is sending mixed messages this morning. The DOW is down slightly with a worse than expected earnings report from Johnson and Johnson. The yield on the 10 year bond is down from the close on Friday, which has current mortgage rates trending down as well.

If you are hoping to buy a home and enjoy the $8,000 tax credit, you’d better hurry, because November 30th is approaching rapidly. Since most home sales are taking at least 45 days from start to close it’s going to be a photo finish for those of you who currently out looking for that perfect property.

Back in January of this year, before the major media mentioned it, I told readers that bidding wars had erupted over short sales and foreclosures in South Florida. I also mentioned that these properties were often selling above their asking prices, and that home prices seemed not only to be stabilizing, but on occasion, to be rising. In addition, I noted that home sellers were conceding less and less on price.

The House of Representatives has voted to extend the popular $8000 first time home buyers tax credit to military personnel who are currently serving overseas. These soldiers and their families might have missed out on this credit, if it is not otherwise extended, because they were serving their country while it was being offered.

Leave it to congress to try to get in the way of the current housing recovery. Even though the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) is the only lending agency that those who aspire to purchase homes can currently turn to, a House subcommittee has decided that the FHA’s assets suddenly require scrutiny.

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association the current mortgage rates are officially under 5% with purchase applications jumping 13.2% and refinance applications jumping a whopping 18.2% compared to the previous week’s results. Remember when we are quoting averages of mortgage interest rates, the average usually assumes there is .6 % of an origination point or fee involved.

Looking through the multiple listings in South Florida, we find that close to one third of homes listed are in short sales. Las Vegas, which underwent a boom and bust cycle similar to that of South Florida, is also awash in short sale properties.

When I checked the multiple listings between West Palm Beach and Miami 2 days ago, there were more than 2,000 single family homes with asking prices of over $1million. If we add condominiums to those numbers, we’ll find at least a thousand more with asking prices of over $1million. But whatever the current asking prices are, they have already been reduced by 30-40% off their 2007 highs.

Despite the fact that we’re supposedly in a buyer’s real estate market, there don’t seem to be enough houses to go around to satisfy the needs of all the first time buyers moving into the Florida market. Perhaps that is why realtors are reporting multiple offers on bank foreclosures, and owners are giving less and less ground on selling prices.

Freddie Mac this week released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®) in which the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 5.04 percent with an average 0.6 point for the week ending September 24, 2009, unchanged from last week when it averaged 5.04 percent. Last year at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 6.09 percent.