Housing Market Bouncing Back

When economists looked into their crystal balls last winter, their visions of the future did not include a housing market recovery-in-progress, the North County Times reported.

After a three-year stretch in which housing values plummeted to half their 2006 peak, the median resale price for a single-family house in San Diego started coming back in May, rising 4.4 percent to $365,000 by the end of November, according to real estate data firm DataQuick Information Systems.

In Riverside, median home prices began their bounce in June, and rose 11.3 percent to $190,000 by the end of November, according to the paper.

"That is what I would call the most unexpectedly crazy thing," said Chris Thornberg, a real estate expert with Beacon Economics in Los Angeles. "There's no reason the market should have bounced back as fast as it did. You look at historical bubbles, they never bounce back this fast."

Where did the surge in prices come from?

"The answer is government intervention," Thornberg said.

Read more: North County Times