Bloomberg, Washington Post & Others Paint Gloomy Picture, Is It Reality?

If you're a Google user, you've likely seen the news, Housing Sales are down. Washington Post, Bloomberg and others are all reporting the numbers.  With these papers reporting doom and gloom it's no wonder the public is skiddish in some cases to purchase.  If anything the way this news is presented should get them off their duff and buy a home, especially the renters.

Bloomberg says housing inventory is up 5%. The post says sales are down 9%.  What's it all mean? These articles were all written with our NAR as the source, so what did the original data say?

Washington Post must have only read this:
Total existing-home sales - including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops - slipped 0.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate1 of 5.75 million units in July from an upwardly revised pace of 5.76 million in June, and are 9.0 percent below the 6.32 million-unit level in July 2006.

While Bloomberg read this:
Total housing inventory rose 5.1 percent at the end of June to 4.59 million existing homes available for sale, which represents a 9.6-month supply at the current sales pace, up from an upwardly revised 9.1-month supply in June.

What they apparently didn't read, or rather maybe, they read too much into it was this:
Lawrence Yun, NAR senior economist, said the market is holding on despite temporary mortgage disruptions. "Home sales probably would be rising in the absence of the mortgage liquidity issues of the past two months," he said. "Some buyers with contracts have been scrambling when loan commitments did not materialize at the last moment, while other potential buyers are simply waiting for the mortgage market to stabilize.

"The rise in sales and prices in the Northeast region on a fairly consistent basis in recent months is promising because this was the first region that underwent sales and price weakness after the boom. Now, it appears that it will be the first region to climb back, indicating that other regions could follow a similar path."

I don't want to act like a pollyanna, but this data is meaningless to me and I think to you as well.  People still want to buy homes, population is increasing and there is a need.  Good agents can find deals and transactions and the other ones will be weeded out.  One thing this market is teaching us is to watch our budget! That's a strong positive, as we'll be in position to sieze the market when it swings up.

Here's the link to the NAR article: Interestingly titled "Existing Home Sales Stable in July." You can find the gloomberg... err bloomberg and the others by doing a search if you like.