Economists Can’t Even Agree to Disagree

We keep you abreast of the economic news because it can affect the way a fair number of home buyers think about their family’s financial planning. And sooner or later, homes sales statistics reflect those effects.

But even when homes sales are improving, every once in a while it’s hilariously clear that the experts haven’t got much to tell us, no matter how hard they look at their data. But that doesn’t necessarily keep them from trying. This last week served up some classic examples.

It was the Wall Street Journal that broke the good news: “Housing Market Crawls Back,” was the headline in both the print and online editions. Although the mental image of anything that has to go “crawling” might not seem terribly upbeat, the sub-headline explained that home prices were “Stirring Hope for Recovery.”

But wipe that smile off your face! The first sentence began, “Housing prices across the U.S. fell in March…” A paragraph later we learned why that was good news. Because it “offered fresh evidence of a real-estate (sic) market on the mend.” In case that has you puzzled, the WSJ followed up with a couple of explanations.

First, prices “fell just 0.03% in March.” That should cheer everyone up, because that’s barely falling at all. Second, we should all be happy because “after adjusting for seasonal factors, they rose 0.09%” according to the widely-followed Case-Shiller Index.

In other words, the falling prices didn’t actually fall. They rose. After that clarification, the authors went on to quote a Columbia Business School professor, a forecasting firm and a real estate investor, all more or less saying the ‘floor was in’ and the overall market was on the rebound. There were ‘more offers than last year;’ ‘right around December buying activity really picked up;’ and ‘the worst’ was over.

Further clarifying, the article quoted Yale’s Robert Shiller, whose worries about the European crisis and government mortgage guarantees led him to say, “There is too much uncertainty.” His partner, Karl Case (remember the Case-Shiller Index?) explained further: “There is nothing but good news since April,” he clarified.

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When homes sales statistics rise, the economic news is a confidence booster; when homes sales statistics fall, confidence lags. But for those of us who keep track of the latest news, last week it appeared as if they were doing both at the same time. Or maybe neither. Hard to tell.

Summing up -- it was a good week to read the sports section.