that sales of new homes rose 5.5% last month and economists believe it could take three years to get back to a more normal rate given the glut of unsold homes and falling prices. but this could be news in terms of skipping at the bottom as we have often said. now, two things that folks across the country are doing ahead of the holiday weekend. spending and hitting the road. more than 92 million of all of us will be traveling away over the coming holiday weekend. aaa is predicting that nearly all of us, 93%, will get in the old coche. despite the record-setting price for gas this christmas. hi, richard. of the 92 million americans who are traveling over this break we re told the vast majority 85 million are going to by car paying on arg nationwide $3 a gallon for gas and that s up 40 cents from a year ago and alaska and hawaii, they are always the most expensive but the coasts
the commerce department reporting that housing starts last month increased 10 1/2%, and that s the highest level we ve seen in about four-months. but we don t have to tell you that the real estate market is still very weak. we have banks sitting on huge inventories of unsold homes. it s tough to know what s going on in this market. phil keating is live from miami, florida, definitely being beat up by this housing crisis. in this area, how much real estate in this area is bank owned? considering it s a handful of very large banks that own all of these properties it truly is an extraordinary amount of real estate. analysts say, estimate, that 33 percent of 40 percent of the nation s real estate properties are owned by this small group of big banks, in some states, it could be as high as 50 percent, so it totals nationally to about a million properties right now, and many of these properties are also on the shadow market, meaning they re not for sale, technically, not officially listed