Lucky break for the Obama administration: the actual 11% drop in new home sales is nowhere near the starkest demonstration of general economic incompetence. That award goes to whoever settled on the figures indicating that the exact opposite would happen. Thomson Reuters polled economists who projected a 2.3 percent increase in new homes sales. They were off by about 13.5 percent. This follows the “unexpected” rise in new jobless claims last week, which echoed the “unexpected” rise in August jobless claims that Reuters reported.
We’ve now reached the point where the most generous thing you can say about the media’s preferred economists is that they’re intentionally making things up. Because if they’re crunching numbers and building models and producing something they think is accurate, they really need to reevaluate what it is they think they’re doing with their lives:
Sales of new homes plunged unexpectedly last month to the lowest level since April, a sign the housing market recovery will be rocky… The Commerce Department said Wednesday that November’s sales fell 11 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 355,000 from a downwardly revised 400,000 in October. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected a pace of 440,000. Sales were down 9 percent from a year ago.
It’s too bad. The AP was pretty psyched about getting to publish some good news for Obama. Their real estate writer Alan Zibel even filed an initial report last night. The headline was “November new home sales seen rising 2.3 percent” and the lede closed with “the housing market is finally on solid ground.” This followed his writeup from yesterday about previously occupied home sales, where the headline was “Tax credit drives surge in home sales” and the first sentence was “Extraordinary government efforts to stabilize the housing market are paying off.”
Now you might be inclined it’s embarrassing for Zibel to have jumped the gun on a 13% mistake. Which it must be. But don’t miss how he should be even more embarrassed about yesterday’s declarations of “solid ground” given that today’s figures (a) indicate the opposite and (b) trump those numbers:
New home sales data, released Wednesday, are a better indicator of future real estate activity than sales of previously occupied homes, but capture a smaller slice of the market. The new home figures tally sales agreements signed in November, while home resale numbers reflect contracts signed over the summer that were completed in November. So while home resales rose 7 percent last month, the National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday, most economists expect completed sales to decline during the winter months. “Buyer traffic is likely to be flat until spring,” predicted Mark Vitner, senior economist with Wells Fargo Securities.
You have to look pretty hard for this morning’s original celebratory article, incidentally. The only reason I even knew to look for it is because I had it in the AP RSS feed. As of about 8am PST there are exactly 3 copies of it left on Google News. Which is good, because if that sort of thing got around it might paint mainstream media outlets as Obama worshiping Big Government cheerleaders.
References:
* November new home sales sink 11 percent [Zibel / AP]
* New US jobless claims rise unexpectedly [AP]
* U.S. jobless claims unexpectedly rise [Reuters]
* November new home sales seen rising 2.3 percent [Zibel / AP]
* Tax credit drives surge in home sales
Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Economy
* Media Bias
* American Politics
