MSM reading HP? Calling David Lereah and NAR liars, and reporting that price numbers are bogus due to incentives

It really is nice to see reports in the media now on the issues we've been raising for months and months. The corrupt NAR, the median price BS, the option-ARM mortgage timebomb, the consumer meltdown. I do think some of 'em are getting it from the bloggers, but imitation is flattery, eh?

Here's a good write-up in Fool:

On housing front, it's beginning to get ugly- Builders send danger signals; concessions may mask real price drops

I'm sure others have noticed, as I have, the increasingly desperate pleas from the housing-bubble cheerleaders, especially National Association of Realtors Chief Economist David Lereah.

A longtime bubble denier — who, I think, is more interested in protecting his constituency of six-percenters than in offering realistic housing-market commentary — Lereah began asking the Fed to protect his bubble a couple months back. At the same time, he and his associates have tried to spin the situation with the news media, who, hungry for soundbites, are usually all too happy to parrot headlines such as "Existing-home sales down with softening prices."

It turns out that the anecdotal evidence for falling prices may be exactly right, because a large number of housing sale prices may be based on fudged numbers.

That's right, the last leg of Greenspan's bubble may be collapsing under the weight of farcical accounting — trickery that would get you tossed in jail if you tried it at an American corporation.

Many economists and commentators have begun to point out that housing prices are inflated to an unknown degree by seller concessions: rebates on closing costs, swimming pools, new kitchen countertops, luxury trips once a year for life and other goodies detailed in a recent New York Times article. These and other expensive sweeteners are now par for the course as desperate sellers try anything to move their houses.

The problem is that these real costs don't appear in the selling price, thus distorting reality and effectively continuing the pleasant myth that Americans have become comfortable embracing: House prices don't drop. Unfortunately, they do.