More generally, US manufacturing output, which has benefited from strong export demand, rose at an annual rate of 9 percent over the first four months of the year. At the same time, significant restraints on the pace of the recovery remain. In the housing market, sales and construction have been temporarily boosted lately by the homebuyer tax credit.
But looking through these temporary movements, underlying housing activity appears to have firmed only a little since mid-2009, with activity being weighed down, in part, by a large inventory of distressed or vacant existing houses and by the difficulties of many builders in obtaining credit.