It happened. It finally happened. The housing market, almost four years after the Great Recession, found the floor. It fell further than most people thought it would, but 2012 will be remembered as the year when home values reached the bottom and started ever-so-slowly to rise again. According to the latest S&P/Case-Shiller index, home prices are up across the country. There were 2.3 million houses on the market in the third quarter, as opposed to 2.9 million year on year, according to the National Association of Realtors. Seasonally adjusted, total existing-home sales were up 10% in the same period, according to NAR. Meanwhile, the number of completed foreclosures hit 57,000 in September — half the number in September 2010 at the peak of the crisis, according to industry analysis firm CoreLogic. Now the question is whether the housing recovery will hold — and if so, whether it will spur a larger U.S. recovery.