jed kolko, before we get to florida and the campaign, fill in the national picture for us a bit. what do today's numbers tell us? >> the housing market is still struggling in most parts of the country. even though we have seen some good news in the past few months, both sales and construction appear to be picking up a bit, but home prices are still falling. not as much as they did at the worst part of the housing bust but they are still falling. a lot of people have wondered how can that be? we thought that if you fixed the economy, the housing market would follow and we've seen employment growing each month for more than the last year. but the problem is even with more jobs and growing housing demand, there's so much inventory, so much supply, so many vacancies that it's hanging over the housing market that makes it hard for prices to rise. you may have more people who are demanding housing and are looking to buy, but there are so many homes that are available and could come to market if prices started to rise that there's nothing to push prices upward until we get rid of some o