FLASH: New home sales plunge again - down 21% vs. last year, prices crash at least 8% but nobody knows...

Everything's fine. Housing is in a soft landing. There was no bubble. Now's a great time to buy! There's never been a drop in the US median home price. Housing is your best investment. Renting is throwing money away.

Remember the idiots who used to post such dribble on this blog? Meanwhile, if you bought a new home in the past couple of years, technically, on paper, you're probably bankrupt.

Hat-tip to Doom for the chart that's worth a million realtors on commission... Too bad we can't get real pricing information though. This report is 100% bullsh*t when it comes to that as they don't include the firesale incentives. Prices are probably down another 20% or more than we're hearing...

And I love the MSM reporting the 8.3% drop from LAST MONTH. Uh, MSM, you look at YEAR OVER YEAR in this business. Idiots.

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Sales of new US homes slid 8.3 percent in August to their lowest level in seven years, Commerce Department data showed Thursday in yet another sign of the troubles in the real estate market.

The report showed new-home sales at a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 795,000, worse than market expectations of a decline to a rate of 825,000.

The pace of new-home sales is down 21.2 percent from a year ago.

Also, the median sales price fell to 225,700 dollars, an 8.3 percent decline from the previous month and a level not seen since January 2005.

"This is just hideous," said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at High Frequency Economics.

TIME magazine pulls their REIC-sponsored head out of their ass and writes for the first time about the Great Housing Crash

Hey, it's only been two years. Nice to see America's most trusted weekly news magazine FINALLY write about the biggest story in the land.

HP MEMO TO TIME MAGAZINE EDITORS - YOU'RE INCOMPETENT AT BEST, CORRUPT AT WORST, AND YOU ARE IRRELEVANT. YOU MISSED ONE OF THE BIGGEST STORIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY, AND NOW, IT'S TOO LATE. YOU SUCK.

I'd give you more of their story here, but they add nothing to the debate and nothing to the story. If you subscribe to TIME magazine, you should cancel, and subscribe to a REAL news magazine, like The Economist, or better yet the daily Financial Times. TIME magazine is a joke. People-Magazine-like joke. A Screech-from-Saved-By-the-Bell-type-joke. A Hi-my-name-is-Scotter-Libby-type joke.

HousingPANIC Stupid Question of the Day

Question for HP'ers: Did HP and the other bubble blogs help save you from doing something really really stupid?

Here's a great and inspiring letter over at the always excellent housingdoom. Some people ask why I do HP. This is why. I imagine all the other bubble bloggers would say the same. To help our fellow man, and to get the word out about the corrupt REIC (realtors, mortgage brokers, lenders, appraisers, builders) who screwed America.

Why haven't Time or Newsweek put the Housing Crash and Mortgage Meltdown on their covers yet?

It makes absolutely no journalistic or business sense why Time and Newsweek haven't addressed in ANY way the Great Housing Crash yet on their covers or in their editorial, since the reckless and mistimed June 2005 infamous time housing cover.

Britney Spears? Sure. Iraq? Of course. The Presidential race? You got it. And pretty much every other topic under the sun. But for some reason, both of these publications have been completely asleep (and completely incompetent) when it comes to the one subject that personally effects the most amount of their readers - the Housing Crash.

Serious question - Why?

Why aren't the two major news magazines covering the AP's 2006 biggest story of the year? Why aren't they covering the most important financial story in the history of humanity? Why aren't they covering the one story dominating water cooler conversations in America today (besides America's Got Talent of course)?

Are they that incompetent? Or is there another reason?

I've now completely given up on the MSM's ability to report the news

Hat-tip Housingdoom for the permits graph...

____________

It was fascinating to see 99% of headlines yesterday shout out "Housing Starts Down 2%", when indeed, housing starts were down 24%. Twenty-Four Percent. Two-Four.

Yes, 24% versus last year. The only number that really matters. And to spin permits as "up" is like spinning Bush is "soaring"

I hate the mainstream media. They're incompetent, and when they're not being incompetent, they're corrupt.

And because there is no longer a fourth estate, we get into the messes we're in today.

Here's a columnist from Motley Fool who did his job yesterday. Voice in the wilderness.

May Housing Starts Tumble

Housing starts came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.47 million, down 2.1% from the downwardly revised April estimate, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. On a year-over-year basis, the May housing starts dropped 24.2%.

But here's a selection of headlines from papers that should be shut down:

Housing starts fell 2% in May; building permits rose 3%
US housing starts fall 2% in May
US Housing starts decline 2.1% in May
May Housing Starts Fall 2.1%, but Permit Activity Picks Up
Housing Starts: Is the Worst Behind Us?