I love reading the news. There's always something to keep you on your toes -- especially with the housing market. Consider this: with the key spring selling season about to get under way, the inventory of homes on the market is climbing sharply in a number of major cities, and this seems to have gotten the attention of the infamous market analysts.
Now personally, I'd consider that a harbinger of spring. After all, the warmer months are usually the best selling months on the housing market. (If you live in the northeast like I do, you'd rather move when there's no snow...) So, of course there are more houses on the market.
Do the analysts recognize this? Of course not. Check out the following quote from the Wall Street Journal Online: "[The increase in housing inventory] is the latest sign that the balance of power between buyers and sellers is shifting as the once red-hot housing market continues to cool. The slowdown is affecting both existing homes and new homes. Yesterday, the nation's largest builder of luxury homes, Toll Brothers Inc., reported a 29% decline in new orders in its first quarter, which ended Jan. 31." Now, any chance the Toll Brothers saw a decline in the past quarter because it's winter time, and perhaps Thanksgiving and Christmas takes our attention away from home buying?
Of course not. That would just be common sense, and we all know that analysts are MUCH smarter than that.
Michael
