It's Not All Gloom and Doom - Howard Voyles / HosuingMatrix.com

Michael Santoli of Barron’s points out the following promising developments:

The U.S. corporate-credit market has remained wide open for business. New issuance has surged in response to heavy demand by cash-heavy, stability-seeking investors, and interest-rate spreads have remained tame. This wouldn't last through a sovereign-debt meltdown, but for now implies some resistance here against debt contagion.

Domestic light-auto sales this month are seen hitting a 13.4 million annual rate, well on their way back to the 30-year average of 14.6 million. Real, nondefense capital goods orders have been running right near their average level since the mid-'90s. Household debt payments relative to disposable income are as low as in the early '80s.

A technical reading - The Tobin's Q ratio—a slow-moving and rather stringent measure of equity-market value versus corporate net-asset value–sat right on its 40-year average at the end of the third quarter, except in the months surrounding the March 2009 market low.

Even employment hasn't behaved much differently than in the previous two post-recession convalescences. The average monthly net gain in private-sector jobs over the past year was 152,000 –roughly the same as in mid-1993 and 2004.

The housing market has quite likely bottomed:

The degree of "under-building"—has probably exceeded the amount of over-building of the prior six or so years, based on some persuasive analyses. The main publicly-traded home builders have recently reported double-digit increases in orders (off, admittedly, pathetically low levels).

Localized gluts of unsold homes, a crowded and slow foreclosure pipeline and tight mortgage-origination standards will prevent housing from becoming a driver of the economy.

Home-affordability levels are at 35-year highs and the average rent on vacant properties now 28% higher than an average mortgage payment, time has brought healing to this sector.

Shares of any home builder or lumber producer that has survived the past couple of years should amply reward an investor who assumes something as quaint as a five-year investment horizon.