Housing problems

The wall street journal and several other news outlets all made it look like the housing sector was still on fire when the July numbers were released. They all focused on the same aspect; house sales rose 6.5% and broke yet another record during the month of July.

But they left out some rather important info; the median price fell down by 7.2% in the month of July. In June the commerce Dept stated that the median house price dropped by 6.5% for the month of May and we are sure that June must have experienced a decline of a similar magnitude Full Story.

Even if we leave the June numbers out we get a whopping 15.5% drop in just two months. The August figures came in recently and the median price dropped once again. In China Shanghai led the housing boom but right now it has seen the largest decline in price Full Story. The media is masking this bad news by twisting the numbers and now comparing prices to what they were a year ago rather then on a month-to-month basis. This week a big deal was made about housing starts jumping up with construction permits surging to their highest levels since 1973 Full Story.