Congress came back after a short Christmas break, but as of Sunday night the solons hadn’t agreed to any plan of action to avoid the colorfully but not quite accurately named fiscal cliff.

The Census Bureau reported on Thursday that the rate of new home sales was an annualized rate of 377,000 units in November, up from 361,000 in October.

The U.S. home-price recovery seems to be a sustained one, if the latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices are any indication.

Even as the 2012 holiday shopping season was ending on Monday, at least one estimate said that consumers didn’t spend that much more this year than last year.

The National Association of Realtors said on Thursday that total existing-home sales nationwide—including completed transactions for single-family houses, townhomes, condos and co-ops—rose 5.9 percent to an annualized rate of 5.04 million units in November, compared with 4.76 million in October.

Private housing starts in November came in at an annualized rate of 861,000 units, according to the Census Bureau. That’s 3 percent below the revised October estimate of 888,000, and adjusted for the fact that colder weather slows down housing construction.

The National Association of Home Builders reported that builder confidence in the market for new single-family homes rose for an eighth consecutive month in December to 47 on the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index.