So it is Barack Obama, and by a landslide. The voters of the United States have built a prism – their decisive choice of a black, young, liberal leader – through which the rest of the world will view all of their country's actions for the next four or possibly eight years.

But while the new president grapples with complex economic and military issues, he may inherit a property market that is just a little better than he might have expected.

Two key indicators lead me to say this. Firstly, 'second hand' home sales rose in September by 5.5 per cent. A total of 5.18 million homes were sold, up from the August figure of 4.91m and 1.4 per cent higher than the September 2007 level – the first time in three years that any sales figure in the United States housing market has been above its year-ago equivalent.

"The sales turnaround, which began in California several months ago, is broadening now to Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri and Rhode Island," says Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist of the National Association of Realtors.

Secondly, figures for the US new-build homes sector show that sales in this market rose, too, by an unexpected three per cent. The annualised rate of new sales in September ran to 464,000 – although that remains a third below its long-term average, it was up 12,000 on August, and exceeded Wall Street analysts' expectations of 450,000.

This sales rise was noticeably strongest in the west of the country, where the boom had been biggest and the glut of unsold new homes highest.

This accounts in part for how the September total was clearly helped by developers dropping their prices to a four-year low, some 9.1 per cent beneath their recent peak. But a sales rise is a sales rise, however it comes about, and this one was a surprise to commentators.

Now no one – least of all Obama – is going to assume this automatically means the market is at its bottom and on the way back. Prices of US homes have dropped by an average of 20 per cent and many observers say they still have some way to go in 2009.

Some data (albeit disputed data) suggests that one in 10 American home-owners has defaulted on their mortgage or actually lost their home in foreclosure, while nearly four in 10 owe more than their home is worth.

But these sales indicators have, in the past, accurately heralded the start of trouble. Might they be equally accurate in predicting an end to that trouble?

Whether he has timed his presidency well or badly in terms of the real estate sector's recovery, Obama has given clear statements on his three-pronged housing policy. He wants a modernised and better regulated financial sector as it applies to housing, achieved through more transparent disclosure of its liquidity levels, better and earlier identification of risks, and crackdowns on trading activity that in reality turns into market manipulation.

Obama also wants to help owners faced with default or foreclosure by incentivising lenders into refinancing 'problem' mortgages to allow the debt burden to be met by poorer owners, by introducing a new mortgage interest tax credit aimed at reducing interest payments by the poorest 10 per cent, and by reforming mortgage firms' bankruptcy rules to allow 'predatory' home loan terms to be modified in certain circumstances.

Finally he wants to enact a $30 billion (Dh110bn) 'stimulus package' covering everything from better funding for financial advice to the poor, to subsidies to local councils faced with reduced tax income from properties with falling values, right to extended benefits which would give jobless home owners a better chance to pay their mortgages. Whether he has the political will – let alone sufficient tax dollars – to do all of this remains to be seen. But it is at least a clear programme to tackle the problem in the United States, and one which may benefit from the additional momentum of those improved housing market sales figures.

But Obama faces one other problem too: the burden of expectation.

Not only is the US looking to him to enact the change he spoke of so often during his campaign. The world too expects to see change – not only within the US but in that country's approach to and co-operation with other nations.

Obama promises a more collegiate, dignified, conciliatory approach to global problems. Given the United States central role in the credit crunch, is it too much to hope that this new emphasis on internationalism might include leadership on helping the world's property markets to recover?

We must hope and believe that is possible. Welcome to office, President Obama.

- Graham Norwood is the Property Correspondent for The Observer