Yun is at it again, shilling irrational optimism to the media who seem only to happy to quote this discredited shill.
“‘The exact timing and the strength of a home sales recovery is a bit uncertain,’ Lawrence Yun, the group’s chief economist, said in a statement. ‘A meaningful recovery in existing-home sales could occur as early as this spring, or it may be further delayed toward late 2008.’” (AP News)
Really? You have lost your credibility. Don't listen to this paid spinner as he has been wrong many times before. He is paid to spin optimistic mesages on behalf of the real estate industial complex (REIC).
I thought the meaningful recovery was supposed to happen in summer 2006...then it was supposed to recover in fall 2006...then it was supposed to recover in winter 2007...then it was supposed to recover in spring 2007...then it was supposed to recover in summer 2007...then it was supposed to recover in fall 2007...then it was supposed to recover in winter 2008.
ReplyDeleteSee a pattern Larry? Don't fprget, this is an affordability problem. The only way sales will pick up is when house prices drop to reflect an affordable price to income ratio. That means a price drop of 30 to 60 percent in bubble areas. If such a drop in prices happens before late 2008, then I will agree that a recovery will happen in late 2008.
Larry, i'm a roast...baste me. Explain to me what other possible logical events will improve affordability significantly and thus allow sales to increase by the end of this year.
David Lereah and his successor Lawrence Yun have basically said the same thing over and over since around the middle to end of 2006. Their message is pretty much "the problems seem to be behind us now, conditions are improving, sales will pick up in a few months".
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't matter that the recovery in the timeframes that they keep mentioning turns out to not happen over and over and over; they'll just keep repeating the same sh*t, pushing the recovery time ahead a few months each time.
I'll bet that Lereah/Yun/(whoever fills in if Yun leaves) will keep repeating this BS until we finally do reach bottom (at least a couple of years from now). Then once that happens they'll say something like "See, we were right all along!"
What bothers me the most, of course, is that news articles keep quoting the NAR's lousy predictions as if their predictions have any prescience or logic behind them, forgetting that the NAR is an organization whose goal is to persuade people to buy and sell real estate so that they receive commissions. Why is the media so stupid?
From the Fed, 1/22/08: "Moreover, incoming information indicates a deepening of the housing contraction as well as some softening in labor markets."
ReplyDeleteYet Yun still says housing is improving. Would Yun argue with the Fed?