Housing Recovery Finds Foundation

I would say the single-family homes are cheap now, too.... If I had a way of buying a couple hundred thousand single-family homes and had a way of managing -- the management is enormous, is really the problem because they're one by one; they're not like apartment houses -- I would load up on them, and I would take mortgages out at very, very low rates. But if anybody is thinking about buying a home, five years ago they couldn't buy them fast enough because they thought they were going to go up, and now they don't buy them because they think they're going to go down. And interest rates are far lower. It's a way, in effect, to short the dollar because you can take a 30-year mortgage, and if it turns out your interest rate is too high, next week you refinance lower. And if it turns out it's too low, the other guy's stuck with it for 30 years. So it's a very attractive asset class now.

-- Warren Buffett, CNBC's "Squawk Box"

I have been planning to discuss the brighter outlook for the U.S. housing market for several weeks.

Warren Buffett's remarks (above) on "Squawk Box" have pushed me to expand on that optimistic scenario this morning.

Recent Housing Statistics Are Improving