Email of the Day: “Why Are You So Negative About Housing?”

July 20, 2011 4:00pm by Barry Ritholtz

So I get this very earnest email asking me why 1. I am such a bear on Housing and b) I am cherry picking only negative housing data . “I see you mentioned (cherry picked) EHS data today, but you failed to mention the big improvement in Housing Starts.”

Fair questions both:

I tweeted, but did not blog Housing Starts, as I find its far less important than EHS:

“Oh goody, more supply! Should be great for prices (not) Building permits up 2.5% to 624K.”

Second, I have discussed many times that Starts and New Home Sales are an erratic data series, subject to weather, contractor reportage, etc.

Last, and most important, the Permits chart looks awful. If this were a stock, would you buy it?

Housing Starts

Source: Asha Bangalore, Northern Trust

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