Gotta love our incompetent MSM. Reporters are no longer reporters, they're copy/pasters who take business and government press releases and report them as the news, with no critical analysis and no oversight.
The performance of the mainstream media in America is shameful. They should disgust you, and you should not trust a word they say. Lazy. Simply lazy. They helped get us into the Iraq mess, and they helped cause the housing bubble. Shameful.
That said, the monkey-run NAR today put out their disastrous existing home sales report, complete with Excel spreadsheet. Of course, nobody in the MSM bothered to check the numbers or question the NAR spin. Nope, they just reported sales down 8%, and made that sound bad enough, but if they had reported the REAL numbers - down 29% versus last month and 23% versus last year, now THAT would have really freaked people out. Of course, the MSM is too stupid to realize that the NAR goes with the "annualized" number because that takes longer to crash.
Do your own search - good luck finding any report that shows the -23% or -29% true numbers. And why won't you find it? Because the NAR didn't report it in their PR, so nothing to copy and paste for the lazy MSM.
Here's the simple numbers from the NAR:
Sept 2007: 409,000 sales (down 29% versus last month, down 23% versus last year)
Sept 2006: 529,000 sales
August 2007: 575,000 sales
Why do blogs have to do the job of the MSM? Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.
Here's the NAR release that everyone copy/pasted with some laughable Yun quotes, and some of the lazy MSM reports
Existing-Home Sales Tumble 8%
Wall Street Journal
Existing Home Sales Plunge by 8 Percent
The Associated Press
Home sales sink 8%
CNNMoney.com
October 24, 2007
FLASH: Used home sales crash 29% versus last month, and 23% versus last year. Yet the lazy and corrupt MSM reports sales down only 8%
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58 comments:
How can there be such a large discrepency between seasonally adjusted and non seasonally adjusted numbers?
I love it! LOL! Yun is now addressing "distortions" because the jumbo loan business is blowing up. Did he address these "distortions" when the subprime low end loans collapsed and the median price rose? Of course not. What a joke. We need more info on here about the worldwide housing bubble. This is by no means a U.S. problem. Europe's housing bubble is bigger than our own, and it is now starting to implode.
Spain
Ireland
England
France
Worldwide recession on the way.
Wow.
Pitiful just pitiful.
They actually pay those monkies?
I would have become a 'journalist' if I knew all you needed to do was ctrl-c and ctrl-v.
I haven't had the time yet to check your numbers, Keith, but if you're right: Congratulations - you have done a superb job!
Keith,
Your right. But we have a failure of leadership across the board. Look at the way our once vaunted system of higher education is pimping students and parents. Every year, double digit cost increases with no end in sight. And they don't care. Just take a look at the financial aid scandals to see how higher ed is caught up in its own version of this mortgage mess.
We are no longer in North America. We have become a South American style country!
Why does the performance of the MSM continue to surprise anybody? Copy/Paste is the American way. I did it in college and so did everybody else. If you flame me for this moment of truth you are a liar. The professor tells you to go to the Internet to gather your information. It is accepted. No thinking required, except to change some of the verbage to prevent "gasp" the evil plagiarism.
We are the United States of Copy/Paste.
So you wonder what happens to a head CEO of a top Mortgage Company..mainly Ameriquest, does when everything you worked for (err! stole for) goes belly up.....well how about a nice cushy job being the United States ambassador to the Netherlands with an estimated fortune of $l.5 billion.
Get yourself a throwing bucket cause you will puke when you read this.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/10/ameriquest-in-s.html
Is that all?
I thought I read last week that the Sept month was down over 60% from last Sept in the Orlando area.
I want to say it was 974 units this Sept vs. 2900+ last Sept, but don't quote me on that.
If correct, at that pace we have over a 26 month supply.
FANTASTIC! Keith you caught the NAR at their lies, but alas your insight will never spread beyond some bloggers who are already probably considered chicken littles.
If you step back and think about it, there must have been a tremendous decline in housing sales to bring down annualized figures by 8% in one month. You can think of it like this, how bad a semester must an "A" student have to bring his 4 year cumulative GPA down to a "B". The answer is he must have failed every class.
Well they can only hide these numbers for so long. They must be thinking they can stave off panic with fuzzy math and the market will rebound before anyone is the wiser. If they really thought we were in for another horrible year they would bite the bullet now. Come January they will not be able to hide the bad news any longer, sales are crashing hard.
Massive Hillary Voting Block
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hNG3TdbKBV4
Massive Hillary Voting Block
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hNG3TdbKBV4
When does it stop being a lazy MSM and start being collusion between business and financial reporting conduits who are dependent on advertising for their livelihoods?
I just read a Bloomberg report concerning the market's expectation for additional rate cuts next week. In the article it is mentioned that CITI did fine, and even with increased loss provisions managed to make money last quarter. PURE BULLSHIT! Levels I II and III make a mockery of any real world accounting of profit and loss or Balance Sheet strength, and it will all blow up at some point.
"It's hard to get a man [reporter] to understand something when his job [reporting] depends on him not understanding". This is where we are today.
These MSM reporters are paid shills who write what they are given.
I don't need numbers to see what's going on.
The same houses that were empty two years ago "ARE STILL EMPTY"!
Keith,
I think a big part of the discrepancy is the seasonal adjustment.
To look at the column your using, the market would have improved from January '07 to September '07 - we don't really think that happened, do we? (actually, maybe it did - average price from 257,300 in jan to 257,800 in sept - after climbing as high as 270,600 in may. ?)
Of course that makes one wish for several years or more of data, to see how this seasonal adjustment really works.
Also, isn't mid to late August when all the subprime, alt-a, option ARM, interest-only stuff went away? Take 40% of the buyers out of the market, it's bound to hurt. Whichb is not to say things aren't crap - just not quite as crap as they look.
You can't fight fundamentals. . .average housing prices in many bubble parts of the country are still 8 to 10 times average salary. Now that funny money has dried up, prices have to come down, or salaries have to go up, or a combination which will take 5 to 10 years.
The new proposed mortgage regulations - people need to qualify for a loan again and have the ability to pay back - will only make prices fall faster.
I don't really care what the NAR says, or for that matter the MSM. . .anyone who has a brain, and looks around them at 10 for sale signs in each block, knows the truth.
BTW - glad to see the PPT (plunge protection team) to the rescue of stocks today. . .down 185, back up 15 at close. . .thanks Ben. . .print some more money! Can't have people fearing falling housing prices and falling dollar AND falling stocks. . .the 14,000 DOW is a Potemkin Village!!!
Oh god, I should have gone further in the NAR release - Yun is such a piece of crap:
"The good news is that mortgage availability has markedly improved in recent weeks..." - right, the disappearnace of 40% ssubprime and alt-A mortgages *forever* is just a God-send.
"NAR President Pat V. Combs, from Grand Rapids, Mich., and vice president of Coldwell Banker-AJS-Schmidt, said housing remains a good long-term investment. " Yeah for definitions of "long-term" ranging into multiple decades, maybe. I won't live long enough to see my house come back :(
The correct comparison is against last year. Anything else is a waste of time.
Take retail sales. How are sales doing? Just look at this month vs. the same month last year.
The NAR knows what it's doing, yet the MSM is too dumb to figure it out.
And that's why we had a massive housing bubble, and that's why we're stuck in Iraq.
The MSM is killing America. That's what happens when five companies control your media.
Keith,
I'm not sure where you're getting your number of 23% YOY. You are correct most MSM is being "neglectful" by not reporting YOY.
I did a search for my article on the dive and the Cincinatti Enquirer did report YOY, but it was negative 19%, not -23%.
I can tell you that based on what I see personally, as a realtwhore as well as talking to brokers and agents with 30+ years in the industry, sales volumes are the worst they have EVER been. It seems people are doing nothing on the buy or rent side. One would think that if home sales decrease, rental demand would increase. That doesn't even seem to be the case. Even renting(at well below the properies holding costs) is a challenge. It seems people are just staying put. Last October I had 11 settlements. This month I have 2, with one lease signing. My business is down 70% over last year, and I am doing better than many. Luckily it does seem there is a huge market for low income smaller rental units(rooms, efficiencies and 1 bedrooms) It's rental cash flows, and used cars paying my bills. If I had to rely on being a Realtor as my only source of income I would have to shoplift those yummy Ramen Noodles, and wouldn't have a stove to cook them on(my home would be in foreclosure). The Cajun ones are the best. I have a very close investor friend that has 6 shortsales in the pipeline right now. It seems that the banks are starting to smell the coffee now. It appears they really don't have much of a desire to build up REO inventory and are very willing to cut a deal before the sheriff sale.
Time to hang up the Realtor pin I am hated for and transform to BOTTOM FEEDER once again. It still seems like it's early in the game though, because even at short sale prices things still barely cash flow My market is not a huge bubble market with decent fundamentals. (reasonable prices and good job growth), so it seems the correction is slow to take hold. We will see what 2008 defaults do to the market. I need to buy at 60% of retail for the cash flows to make sense at the moment. Great buying opportunities are on the horizon. It is sad that my good fortune is at the expense of bad decisions of sheep following the herd.
Bottom Feeder in Philly
Mark in San Diego said...
"You can't fight fundamentals. . ."
Actually you can, if you're the REIC with friends in government or if you're a banker with friends in the Fed. The whole housing bubble was about vested interests fighting fundamentals.
Now, the question is whether they ultimately win or not.
Where did I get my numbers? Right from the NAR excel spreadsheet. Even they show -23% and -29%
But that would involve taking the 5 seconds to open up their file, which the MSM didn't do.
i dont recall seeing this 'annual rate' number before. i read this first on cnbc and honestly, didnt think much of it...i was like "hmm, 5.04 million, i guess that is for the year?" so yes, 98% of the dumb lazy americans wont think anything of this number.
~
the good news is the illiterate and spanish speaking population cant understand this data, and that population is getting bigger by the day.
~
to rant more, how can the msm not pick up on this "annual rate"? this is absurd! what is annual rate, 2007 with oct-dec/07 projections, 9/06-9/07, etc?
what the f
Bottom Feeder in Philly. . .
Your comments about rented rooms and low income apartments is very telling. . .I am getting some feedback about "sofa surfing" around San Diego and San Francisco. . .basically unemployed or underemployed young people who sleep on friends sofa's, or share small apartments. Even the NAR a few months ago mentioned LOW household formation. . .let's face it people - the credit cards are maxed, the HELOCS are history, and consumer prices are climbing at more like 10%. . .people are squeezed and something has to give. . .living in the parents basement will be the trend of the next 10 years.
And tomorrow for their next act, the markets will drop 500 points and stay down for most of the day and then race back up for no apparent reason...
Unbelievable! The general public has no clue and will continue to be clueless with this type of media coverage. The media is attempting to stave off an outright panic! I'm sure they're collaborating with NAR and government officials.
Thanks NAR, Media, Paulson for dumbing down AMERICA! Thanks for letting the general public to continue believing the coast is clear..."Come on in, the water is warm". They keep touting!
This soooo reminds me of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. The general public will NOT see the waves coming. NO warning system in place. The gross part is that everybody at the top knows or has a clue how significant the impact will be once this financial tsunami hits our global shores. SHAME on them!!!!
Probably a dumb question but what is an "annualized" number and how do they get it from the numbers of sales Kieth cites.????????
Yep.....Keith is right. It's all right there in the NAR spreadsheet.
Non-Seasonally Adjusted U.S. Sales are down -28.9% MoM and -22.7% YoY.
http://tinyurl.com/35oqfx
Brutal!!!
The -19% is based on annualized numbers. Keith's numbers are the actual,-23%, which show worsening conditions as we go forward. Go p*ss off, mortgage guy.
Keefer.
US journalist may not be the best, but come on...
Compare to European journalist they are so much better.
US journalist in general, are aware of the distinction between writing their own opinion vs stating the facts.
European journalist on the other hand never ever state the facts, they always write thru their own filter.
An example would be the FT which is really a tabloid pretending to be a financial paper.
same goes for all other EU media outlets
You know its true.
Just checked the numbers for Hillsborough County where Tampa is:
SFR home sales for 8/06=1889. SFR home sales for 8/07=1102. That's about a 42% drop in sales. For September year over year right now its showing a 55% drop, but usually the sales take time to actually get into the database so not sure if it's that bad.
Definitely not even close to 8% here!
So e-mail / call every editor and tell them they reported the data incorrectly.
And shaking off all the bad news with oil and the housing "issue", the market swoons but recovers from the fall at the last.
Unlike Marie Osmond.
DOPES!
-- now Helicopter Ben will only cut .25 instead of .5
Its bad out there - I've never seen such disaster - it truly is the end of real estate - tell all the lies MSM - doesn't change the fact I no longer have a job.
Why is it that when I take the no-seasonally adjusted numbers and add them up to last October's numbers, I get an annual rate of 6.478.000 sales? Which I just realized, happens to be the annualized number for 2006. Could it be that the housing crash is actually not happening?
Seriously, tell me what I did wrong guyz.
Bottom feeder philly is right...
I am a realtor ho.... I thought there wasn't a bubble in 05. I lived in miami..... you know what my rational was when prices were skyrocketing.... If there was a bubble California would be never able to sustain there prices......boy was I right and didn't know it.
I soley do rentals nows. You know something crazy. half my landlords are defaulting on their mortgages and still collecting rent until the sheriff sale....
You know something Keith the general public has no idea how bad it is.
MSM keeps putting a soft spin on the numbers and markets and banks keep fighting to stay liquid.
did you see how they hammered the CEO Stanley O'Neal...that's why the other investment firms are terrified of reporting their write downs.
Also, did you see this unintelligent article.
"Major gauges rebound from Merrill Lynch, housing woes on speculation that the Federal Reserve may take additional action.
By David Ellis, CNNMoney.com staff writer
October 24 2007: 5:08 PM EDT"
How the hell does David Ellis say that at 2pm stocks rebounded from their losses due to speculation of fed cuts. If that were true the markets would not been moved by Merril Lynch's write down or nar numbers that were released this morning.
EX-Realtwhore
Ashman
Here's the pdf file I found that Keith got his #. It even shows -29% and -23% (look at the non-seasonal adjusted column)
http://www.realtor.org/Research.nsf/files/EHSreport.pdf/$FILE/EHSreport.pdf
The 19% number is is the YoY seasonally adjusted annualised change. Which is also in the press release without having to open excel which journalists don't like doing apparently.
What's the over/under on when they revise September's numbers down?
"glad to see the PPT (plunge protection team) to the rescue of stocks today"
Maybe...
It was carry traders/hedge funds. The yen weakened right around the time of the pop. Someone borrowed yen and bought the market. Then they spread the rumor of a rate cut on cnbc. All illegal of course.
Now, after market close, cnbc says it is not a rumor. But thanks for letting us all know about the issue cnbc!
Nigel,
Can you male ONE flipping post without whoring out one of your insignificant sites? Go back and suck up some more with your idol, Casey Serin.
"Those who don't read the newspaper are uninformed, those who do are misinformed"
-Mark Twain
Ed
Nigel,
Can you male ONE flipping post without whoring out one of your insignificant sites? Go back and suck up some more with your idol, Casey Serin.
http://www.realtor.org/Research.nsf/files/EHSreport.pdf/$FILE/EHSreport.pdf
The Centex blowup(Semtex?)and then the Merrill MOAB were really big losses. I wonder when the enormity of the losses will start to make a dent on psychology. What if puppies, not dollars, were lost instead? I try to make the analogy in tonights post.
This soooo reminds me of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. The general public will NOT see the waves coming. NO warning system in place. The gross part is that everybody at the top knows or has a clue how significant the impact will be once this financial tsunami hits our global shores. SHAME on them!!!!
Princess mononoke said,
At a settlement for a HUD home last month I asked the lady who represented HUD her views on the market from her perspective.She said her office is just overwhelmed with properties they need to get ready to go to market. They need to hire more contractors to secure and winterize their homes(imagine that the area of job growth is prepping foreclosed homes). I got a good laugh when she compared what is about to happen in the housing market to a tsunami. Her quote was people are standing on the beach where the ocean just was. They were wondering what was happening as the animals all ran to higher ground. She thensaid homeowners, realtors and lenders are standing around wondering where the water went. She then stated that after 25 years in the business with HUD she has never been so busy, and the defaults in the banks pipelines are staggering. Banks I do business with are calling me to tell me of properties they took into inventory. Only a year ago they would never even admit to having REO's, and now they are calling me. If you have a home to sell, sell now, and take a hit if neccessary. It will be worth less next year. Please don't call me though. I don't want to be a listing agent anymore.
Bottom Feeder in Philly
most people say: "well only sales are crashing, prices are not"
...not realizing they are connected
"Those who don't read the newspaper are uninformed, those who do are misinformed"
-Mark Twain
------------------------------
Ha, kind of suspected that journalist, on average, have always sucked.
I mean, come on, how much "training" does it really take to write a typical newspaper article? Which is why you don't hear of a shortage of journalists. It is because there are plenty of them because it is NOT THAT DIFFICULT to do an average job of it.
consultant said...
We are no longer in North America. We have become a South American style country!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You are absolutly right. That's why in the near future we will be called the North American Union and we will be spending Pesos. uh uhm... excuse me, I mean Ameros.
RayNLA
"US journalist may not be the best, but come on... Compare to European journalist they are so much better."
You must be such an expert of European journalism... Do you read also German, Italian, Swedish, Polish, French, Latvian newspapers? That would be a good start instead of reading just FT.
Europe is just not UK, you idiot.
Anonymous said...
Massive Hillary Voting Block
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hNG3TdbKBV4
___________________________________
I am From St. Louis and I have seen this video before. It's very sad and disturbing to see young black men living in this ignorant sad state of dispair. Blaming others for their ignorance. I used to live in that neighborhood 20 years ago probably with thier parents. Now I live around the block from the ocean in SoCal. (My wife and I are happy renters).
Understand that the ignorant few does not represent the whole. St. Louis has some great people and some nice neighborhoods, abeit segregated by race and class.
I don't want to turn Keith's Blog into a social rant, but I don't have to tell you all there is good and bad in every race. But these fools arent making it any better for us as a people. This is the very thing that Bill Cosby talks about in his new book titled...Come On People. Unfortunately those who need to read it never will.
RON PAUL 08
RayNLA
Baaaa
Many, many sheep will be cold this winter. Some will freeze and pass away. Time to prepare for the worst. With Bush still in charge, things will even be more worse than just basic worse. Trust me.
Gotta roll! ....
Dr. Frankensteen (that's steeeen)
.
I love you man.
Keep it up... contrary to the hopes and fears of others, the masses are slowly waking up.
Permanently.
Sorry, there's ONE honest journalist in the US. Tampa Tribune reporter told it right: Bay Area's Existing-Home Sales Slide 40%
By Shannon Behnken of The Tampa Tribune
Published: October 24, 2007
Let's all email her/him and say, 'Well done."
EX-Realtwhore, Ashman and bottom feeder in Philly almost make me like Real Estate Clerks.
Ah, not really.
But I like their posts.
fmw
You are truly doing "God's work" here. By saving those less educated than ourselves about this mess can and does save some of the families of those who could have been ripped off by these RE shills who will sell their mother to make a sale. Shame on the all those who try to hurt us with empty promisies and false hope.
“If you have a home to sell, sell now, and take a hit if necessary. It will be worth less next year.”
------------------------
Point well taken. My Lynnwood, WA house (in the ‘burbs just north of Seattle) went on the market on Oct. 9, received a bid just 4 days later, and we’ve negotiated back & forth on the price to where we've found a happy medium.
The inspection was yesterday, so I am sitting in pins & needles waiting to hear back from the prospective buyer.
Yes I priced the house right to begin with ($25K/6.5% below what the house next door sold for last year), and yes I will be willing to bump the price down another notch depending on what the inspector found.
Just in order to sell and sell now. The writing is clearly on the wall.
-Mammoth
(PS no financial hit though…bought in ’97)
I think USAToday is playing it safe today with this headline:
"New-home sales up 4.8% from Aug., down 23% from '06"
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/2007-10-25-new-homes_N.htm?csp=15
tfZgkD Your blog is great. Articles is interesting!
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