In the New York Times Today

[MonsterMark]

Full article here.

Notice how every article ALWAYS has to start negative. Amazing. When the NYT has trouble spinning good news bad, we must really be doing well.

April 28, 2006
U.S. Economy Still Expanding at Rapid Pace
By DAVID LEONHARDT and VIKAS BAJAJ
Gas prices are rising, as are mortgage rates. House prices in many once-hot markets have started slipping. The American automobile industry shows no sign of recovery. And the paychecks of most workers have not even kept up with inflation over the last four years.

Yet the national economy continues to speed ahead, with families and businesses spending money at an impressive pace. Forecasters expect the Commerce Department to report this morning that the economy grew at a rate of around 5 percent in the first quarter, the biggest increase since 2003.
[snip]

But for now, the economy is on a fast track. The fact that interest rates remain low, despite the Fed's rate increases of the last two years, is a big reason. The average rate on a 30-year conventional mortgage was 6.3 percent last month, lower than at any point in the 1970's, 1980's or 1990's, according to the Fed.

[snip]

 

[fossten]

Full article here.

Notice how every article ALWAYS has to start negative. Amazing. When the NYT has trouble spinning good news bad, we must really be doing well.

April 28, 2006
U.S. Economy Still Expanding at Rapid Pace
By DAVID LEONHARDT and VIKAS BAJAJ
Gas prices are rising, as are mortgage rates. House prices in many once-hot markets have started slipping. The American automobile industry shows no sign of recovery. And the paychecks of most workers have not even kept up with inflation over the last four years.

Yet the national economy continues to speed ahead, with families and businesses spending money at an impressive pace. Forecasters expect the Commerce Department to report this morning that the economy grew at a rate of around 5 percent in the first quarter, the biggest increase since 2003.
[snip]

But for now, the economy is on a fast track. The fact that interest rates remain low, despite the Fed's rate increases of the last two years, is a big reason. The average rate on a 30-year conventional mortgage was 6.3 percent last month, lower than at any point in the 1970's, 1980's or 1990's, according to the Fed.

[snip]

This guy Vikas Bajaj has written article after article trying to spin the economy bad any way he can. He's a demagogue. He's even wrong about the housing "bubble."

Housing inventories (homes sitting on the market unsold) were up 3.5 percent at the end of October to 2.87 million units. At the current rate of sales this represents a 4.9 month supply of housing.

David Lereah, Chief Economist for NAR stated that the drop in sales and rise in inventories "signals that the housing sector has likely passed its peak. Make no mistake," he said, "slowing has occurred and we expect further cooling in coming months." He projected that the year would end with record total sales of 7.11 million but would slow to 6.86 million in 2006.

Well, that was Monday. On Tuesday the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released their monthly report of new residential sales for October. The preliminary estimate of sales for the month, 1,424,000, was a huge jump - 13.0 percent - over the revised September rate of 1,260,000 units and was 9.0 percent above the estimate for October, 2004. The median price of a single family house sold in October was $231,300. There is an inventory supply of 4.3 months at the current sales rate.
As usual there was considerable disparity from region to region. Both the Northeast and the West recorded increases of over 40 percent while the South barely eked out a 1.9 percent improvement over September and the Midwest lost 9.5 percent.

So is the housing market slowing or surging? There is probably no point worrying about the NAR figures as one month does not make a trend and as the two surveys use different methodologies the disparity is not unusual.. The stock market, however, reacted strongly to the HUD/Census Bureau report with homebuilding stocks rising sharply early in the day.

[snip]

http://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/11302005_Housing_Report.asp