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Local home building and sales market; Optimistic prospects

One by one, the builders spoke at last week’s West Branch Susquehanna Builders Association Home Show.

And they spoke more optimistically than they have in most recent years about the housing and the building industry.

To hear most of them tell it, home building interest is up.

Home sales are more fluid, making it clearly a sellers market.

And home improvement inquiries and plans are more plentiful.

Add to these prospects low interest rates and there exists a recipe for robust activity in a very important part of the economy, regionally as well as nationally.

Construction and home sales activity is so important because it impacts so many other parts of the economy.

It takes materials to build a home or a major addition on a house. It takes people to sell those materials, manufacture them, transport them and, even in a do-it-yourself age, install them.

The sale of a home involves a long line of occupation experts during every step of the process, from Realtors to bankers to closing companies to hauling personnel.

We will see what the spring and summer ahead hold. That’s the ultimate answer to whether this optimism can be turned into real-world economic churn.

If prospects, predictions and indicators become reality, our region will see the smiles of economic upturn in the haunts of many occupations in 2013.

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