Pending Home Sales Miss, Decline For Third Month; NAR Criticizes Flawed Monetary Policy As Culprit

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/27/2011 10:14 -0400
Comments: 64 / Reads: 3,080

With actual economic data now largely irrelevant, and why should it be : "got a recession? There's an EFSF for that" it is hardly worth noting that the third notable economic data point of the day, the first being GDP which came in line on an inexplicable surge in consumer spending in Q3 despite an epic collapse in consumer confidence, and a drop in the market to 2011 lows; the second being the nth consecutive print in initial claims over 400, which was the pending home sales update from the NAR which printed at -4.6% on expectations of an increase of 0.4%, and down from last month's -1.2%. This is the third consecutive monthly slide in sales data, and merely adds to yesterday's near record drop in median home prices, once again simply confirming that the biggest source of US "wealth" housing still has a long way to drop. And while we ridicule him all the time, even the NAR's Larry Yun has figured out that operation twist and monetary policy in general is a failure: "The Federal Reserve evidently has been attempting to lower mortgage rates, yet more consumers are faced with taking out jumbo loans that carry higher interest rates." Speaking of Jumbo loans, PrimeX jumped earlier today on the European news, and has since been drifting lower. It will continue doing so once some semblance of rationality returns.



From the NAR, which already has zero credibility to begin with and its upward bias has been documented on repeated occasions:

Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said the housing market is being excessively constrained. “A combination of weak consumer confidence and continuing tight lending criteria held back home buyers, even though the private sector added nearly 2 million net new jobs in the past 12 months,â€