April 23, 2007

NAR to put out used home sales report tomorrow. Watch The Corrupt David Lereah spin his ass off

Don't be snowed when The Corrupt David Lereah spins the horrific drop in home sales by comparing March to February, when any idiot knows the real and only comparison is March 2007 vs. March 2006.


Watch the clueless and complicit MSM go with the March vs. February number. Also watch the MSM not question the median price number, which doesn't include incentives and cash back.
And watch the MSM take TCDL's "it was the weather" excuse and tell the frightened masses that "it appears we're bottoming", even though unsold and unwanted inventory will be soaring to close to a year's supply in many markets.

Regardless of the lies, deception and spin, the numbers tomorrow are going to be truly horrific. Even the NAR won't be able to hide the truth (spin as they may).

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's gonna be fun watching Davy squirm when September rolls around (His already called 2006 "bottom") and makes March look truly like a boom. Compared to Sept 2006 or Mar 2007, it will look like a disaster. He better hope for some serious hurricanes or earthquakes and sh*t to blame it on......

Anonymous said...

Well of course it's spin. Anyone that doesn't think a 90% drop in prices is upon us must be spinning in HPLand.

Face it morons, you were wrong. There is no crash, there was no crash and there will be no crash. Unless that is you count a $25K increase in median sales price in SF a crash in which case you're nuttier than I thought.

Anonymous said...

If the NAR stays true to form they will first revise the prior month down. Then the current month will be tweeked to report as small an increase as needed to make us all think that home sales have "bottomed out".

Anonymous said...

nobody can tell you with any certainty what the housing market is really doing. There are a million ways to lok at the data. Every MLS system has deifferent rules for what constitutes a sale as do different counties. Commerce Dept numbers have +/- 15% error. DataQuick's numbers have some big margin of error as well. It's at best and educated guess.

No matter who is telling you anything, it's next to impossible to know how accurate the data is.

NAR will only see the positives. HP will only see the negatives. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

Anonymous said...

Sell in May and go away!
It has been true for 20 out of the past 30 years. Selling US stock investments in May and buying again in November works. So when you see US stock markets hitting a record high in the early days of a housing recession and the US dollar tanking, this should make you doubly confident about bailing out for the summer.

You might also care to consider the fact that leverage or margin is now at its highest level in the US since 1929, the year of the Great Wall Street Crash. Or care to note that 90 per cent of stocks are not trading at all-time highs. It is only the performance of the top 10 per cent that produce these record index readings.

Profits may look good but this is history. The US housing crash that is working its way through the economy is surely going to weaken profits for many companies in the coming years, and 60 per cent of the US public thinks there will be a recession, although after such a long period of rising prosperity many people have forgotten that tomorrow always comes.

What will it take to trigger this obvious realization? It might need nothing more than a feeling that stocks have shot too high and that a prudent investor would bank some profits.


Oil price consequences
What relevance does such talk have to the Middle East? Well, oil prices have been weaker since May last year which ought to be a warning bell. If the US capital markets turn down and a recession emerges in the world's biggest economy then that will be bad news for the oil price.

For the oil price would be squeezed from two directions: speculative funds liquidating positions that perhaps account for half the present price; and a shift in the demand curve for oil with a downturn first in the US and then among the economies like China that rely on its consumers.

Indeed, the high oil price can not escape some of the blame for a likely recession. The world economy has borne higher and higher oil prices this century, but there has always to be a tipping point when high oil prices are too much for the global economy to handle.


Tipping point?
Have we reached that tipping point? Some would suggest that it actually happened a year ago when oil touched $78 a barrel and the US housing market first started showing signs of strain, and more recently with the weakening dollar.

We can now hope that the US economy muddles through and the US consumer spends its way out of this slowdown. The problem is that an inflated stock market is juxtaposed with a falling US dollar and housing market. In that case one might at least expect a correction in the US stock market rather than further upside.

Besides the bull market run in US stocks is more than four years' old and well overdue for a summer correction. So perhaps this will be another year when you should indeed, 'Sell in May and stay away!'

An MB in a realtor office said...

When the April's numbers come out s when things are going to get bad. I am a MB in a realtor office, and can tell you with one week of april left this is BAD. March was actually an okay month in N. CA.... not good, but okay. Wait one more month when the april numbers come out..... That is when things are going to look really bad.

Anonymous said...

I expect everything but the truth; especially when it's a sales industry protecting itself.

Anonymous said...

ROGER!!;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger

Anonymous said...

We all know the numbers are twisted but think of all the drones out their with tin foil hats.They cannot think for themselves and that's who the NAR aims their garbage to.The drones are too busy drinking budwieser and spending home equity money that landed in their lap.Most of these people can barely do 5th grade math and you want to talk statistics? All they know is to buy a house because it will get you free money.

Anonymous said...

"Regardless of the lies, deception and spin, the numbers tomorrow are going to be truly horrific. Even the NAR won't be able to hide the truth (spin as they may)."

But Keith, aren't you giving the general reading public far too much credit? After all aren't the people reading the horrific lies, deception and spin the same ones that bought into toxic loans to begin with? Media is working hand-in-hand with corporate con men. Example - Big media keeps on shoving "we need the immigrants" theme down our throat on a daily basis. After all, look how many people Big Tobacco got hooked for life on cigarettes? If that isn't a prime example of the power of media, I don't know what is.

Anonymous said...

P.S. As to how bad it really is, it ALWAYS, ALWAYS depends on your perspective. If you bailed out of your properties and are renting, the figures, no matter what they are won't be bad at all. However, if your trying to sell and your house has been on the market for a year. The figures are going to be bad, no matter what they are.

For me, until the stock market starts to react appropriately, the numbers aren't bad at all. So far, they are completely disassociated.

Anonymous said...

I come here for the REIC babes!

Anonymous said...

Keith - remember this?

http://tinyurl.com/h5zek

Good times......

Anonymous said...

Anon @ 8:52:

You obviously know nothing about residential housing cycles. The first sign of a downturn is lower sales (25-40% lower in almost every market from the top) and higher inventory (30-60% higher from the top in almost every market). Median prices don't begin to show the true weakness of the market until after you have seen the first two things for a while.

That is where we are now. Expect the median prices to begin to come down this year and drop more next year. Add inflation and you'll have your dreaded housing price crash.

In the Long Island, NY area, known to be one of the big bubble areas, inventory on the MLSLI.com website is up about 17% from a year ago, and approaching the July '06 levels. This is supposedly during a time when inventory was leveling out. By July '07, you will see all time high inventories in all areas and the next phase of the housing crash (8-10yr downturn) will begin.

Just remember HP's predictions and tell your friends "Wow, those guys were really right"

Anonymous said...

30+ thousand notices of default in CA last month. Up 30% or so from the month before.

I'd call that a snowball effect. Gee, annualized that's over 5% of the houses in CA going into foreclosure process. That won't be bad for prices though. San fran and LA will be completely immune!

Is that how it worked the last time?

Anonymous said...

Yeah, but also remember it takes time for the effects of changes (e.g. sub-prime meltdown) to make it thru the pipeline, as it's not like NO ONE was making risky loans after the melt started. In fact, there's still plenty of money out there, including for sub-prime loans (I know, it boggles the mind).

Just saying don't be surprised if tomorrow's numbers (or those in the next 6 months) are the big drop that Keith is hoping for: unfortunately many people will remain delusional for years....

Anonymous said...

I converted about 100k in retierment funds from mutal funds to cash today. It will be interesting to see if I timed that right.

michaelwise said...

I hope someone will start to factor out bank purchased foreclosures, when reporting sales. In some towns, bank purchased foreclosures make up the majority of sales. Bank purchased foreclosures are not true sales, and should be factored out.

Anonymous said...

I feel badly,
The house I sold is worth less than the buyer paid. Should I give them some of their money back?

Anonymous said...

At some point, YOY and MOM are both going to turn negative. What's DL going to say then?

Lionel said...

If morons believe prices are coming down significantly over the next four years or so, count me in. I'm a moron! As a moron, I'd like to ask the anonymous realtor, if the Bay Area is so hot right now, why is that my buddy has had his house on the market in Belmont for over a month now with nary a nibble? Same market was on fire a couple of years ago. Strange. Tough being a moron.

Anonymous said...

Well said "anonymous 9:00pm" somewhere in the middle indeed.

If over 500,000 homes sold last month, can we really say that we are in a terminal nosedive?

"But, but in 3 to 6 to 12 to 18 months from now, there's going to be blood on the streets!"

...That very well may be, and in 2 to 5 to 10 to 20 years from now it's going to be WWIII.

Eventually, sure.

...In the meantime, which could be a VERY VERY VERY LONG TIME, let's try to keep the hysteria under wraps and deal with realities on the ground.

...aaaaand, BEGIN!

Anonymous said...

Hey babe, let's go inside and see if the carpet matches the drapes.

Anonymous said...

"At some point, YOY and MOM are both going to turn negative. What's DL going to say then?"

simple, compare to the numbers from 5 years ago. Invent something like an annualized 5 year running number.

Anonymous said...

"bad citizen said...
I feel badly,
The house I sold is worth less than the buyer paid. Should I give them some of their money back?"

Me Too! The last real estate that I sold went for 5 times what the crapbox was worth. I need to go to confession!

Anonymous said...

How is median house price a meaningful stat?

You may live in an area where 20 homes sell for $175K-250K and two homes sell for $1.5 million. Wouldn't the two large sales throw everything out of whack?

Anonymous said...

Honestly Keith, what do you expect from the NAR? They are not a public company. They don't have to be accountable. They are essentially a PR firm for the real estate industry. It is spinning to promote their industry. Believing them about real estate would be like trusting big tobacco to tell you about the risks associated with smoking.

W.C. Varones said...

Holy crap. It's worse than we thought. Sales down not just year-over-year, but also month-over-month. What happened to the spring selling season?

NEWS ALERT
from The Wall Street Journal


April 24, 2007

Existing-home sales took the biggest tumble in 18 years during March as poor weather struck demand. Home resales fell to a 6.12 million annual rate, a 8.4% decrease from February's revised 6.68 million annual pace. The median home price was $217,000 in March, compared with $213,600 in February but 0.3% below $217,600 in March 2006.