Not earthshaking, but here is an interesting comparison for today
Data 101
US new home sales rebound in June in the Financial Times today and New Home Sales: Worst June on Record at Calculated Risk.
Both headlines are “true”.
Much of the same data sources and figures are used. The differences in information are not as stark as the headlines suggest after reading the articles. CR offers a broader historical context but that context is not left out of the Financial Times. Both appear to offer information for the same purpose, as information (ie. not information from National Realtors Assoc.). Yet I come away with very different feelings about the nature of this news in a casual reading.
Welcome to the returned to the future news media! Recall that until about 1870 newspapers were generally organs of policial parties. Its only when the steam press came along and the cost of establishing a paper rose above that which a political party could handle that the media put on the facade of objectivity. The max barriers to entry period of journalism was the 1950s with the 3 networks having a lock on journalism. Then cable and the web broke the cost of entry back down to about where it was in the 1800 in relative terms, with the addition that a world wide audience could be obtained for little more. So naturally the media returned to their roots as political sheets or whatever the modern equivalent would be. Today the barriers are even smaller than in 1800 since you don’t have to move anything physically to get the message out.
The important thing is that there was any uptick at all after the effects of the homebuyers credit expiring. Otherwise the difference in the outlooks simply illustrates what is a problem with any positive news on the economy, which is that historical comparisons always look horrid because we have started from such a low point. You can have good news but still be in a very deep hole, just because you’re five feet under water instead of eight makes no difference when you are drowning.
A later post at CR shows that house prices are falling, with some sort of data lag, so a sales uptick is no big shock.
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/07/survey-shows-house-prices-falling-in.html
I wouldn’t say this is positive news about the economy. I’d say bottom feeders are coming out of the weeds. Historial comparisons look horrible because the situation we’re in is horrible.
Lo siento,
JzB
you missed the surge:
New home sales surge in June (Reuters) – Sales of new U.S. single-family homes rebounded strongly in June from the prior month’s record low, government data showed on Monday, driving the number of houses on the market to their lowest level in nearly 42 years.The Commerce Department said sales
jumped 23.6 percent to a 330,000 unit annual rate from a downwardly revised 267,000 units in May.
The sales pace last month was still the second lowest since records started in 1963