Loan Modification

The National Association of Liars reported existing home sales for December today. They said that existing home sales "increased 2.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.36 million in January from a downwardly revised 5.22 million in December..."

Like all of the NAR data, that's a bald faced lie. Sales were down 120,000 units month to month (30%) to 284,000, and I'm pretty sure even that's a lie. How they used a seasonal adjustment to turn that into a gain, I can't imagine.

...

Here's another shocker which the NAR conveniently failed to mention in its press release. The median sale price fell to $158,000, which was a month to month drop of 6%! By following real time listing prices, I have been able to warn readers of the Professional Edition Housing Report for months that prices have been crashing since last August. The NAR data is finally catching up. This is the lowest level that prices have been throughout this collapse. Prices are now down 13.2% from the June peak when reported prices were distorted by the taxpayers gift. It is a disgrace that this price distortion was barely discussed at the time.