According to this New York Times article, there are two reasons why the housing market is moving in the right direction: housing starts and building permits. Not only did yesterday's report from the Commerce Department state housing starts last month were up nearly 16 percent over June, and almost 22 percent over 12 months ago, but July applications for building permits were up 8.1 percent over the previous month. One company seeing strong sales from new housing starts is Home Depot, whose sales increased 5.7 percent in the second quarter to $23.8 billion.