There were some headlines this week that are making my head spin.
1) Sales of new one-family houses in April 2010 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 504,000 ... This is 14.8 percent (±19.5%)* above the revised March rate of 439,000 and is 47.8 percent (±26.0%) above the April 2009 estimate of 341,000.
2) Purchase Mortgage Applications hit 13 year low. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 3.3 percent from one week earlier and is the lowest Purchase Index observed in the survey since April 1997.
3) Existing-home sales, which are completed transactions that include single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, increased 7.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.77 million units in April from an upwardly revised 5.36 million in March, and are 22.8 percent higher than the 4.70 million-unit pace in April 2009.
Maybe I'm just bad at math, but how do new sales increase 14.8% (I love the +/- 19.5% margin of error), existing sales increased YET applications for a mortgage fell to a 13 year low??? Are we to believe more people are paying cash for homes. I doubt that's the case. Looks to me like another fine example of making up numbers to make the sheep feel better.