November numbers

Here's the latest chart from DataQuick. Riverside county numbers and numbers by city. As expected they are ugly. I don't like to read too much into these charts but they do give a general indication of where the market is going (as if we didn't already know).

More magic Math

The report for new homes came out today and whadda ya know. A 4.8% increase? Huh?

Once again lets look at the actual numbers

Last Sept (06) 80,000 new homes
This Sept (07) 60,000 new homes
Last month (aug) 63,000 new homes

So there was a 25% decrease from last year and a 5% decrease from last month.

The beautiful thing these days is that the data is so easy to find. It's just amazing to me that the media does not check the facts before printing headlines like "New Home Sales Rebound in September" as reported by the AP. I did expect better numbers for Sept since that's the month many of the builders had their deals of the century, Gold Star Events, and other promotions. I'm a little surprised that the actual numbers were down. Also keep in mind that these early estimates are usually revised once the actual numbers are known. Lately the revisions have been running about 5% downward. So expect the number to go down another 5%.