Seen enough April’s Fool jokes today? Yeah me too but I also am writing this after looking over Freakonomics blog. They look at statistics differently or try to look deeper. Right now with tons of numbers and statistics thrown around from National Association of Realtors and Doomers it gets confusing to what is going on in the market.
I don’t really buy either side but they make really good bookends that create limits. Rarely are things as bad or good. If we did have a big increase in sales or price for March I wouldn’t give it much weight. I think you need to look to trends unless you have a specific event that gives you reason to believe a change has happened.
In April 2007 subprime crumbled. Many lenders changed their guidelines and programs fell away for the following 2 months. Even though RMLS could trot out numbers saying we had a appreciation, I didn’t go for it. They were taking 12 months of numbers.
If little Johnny makes these following grades, would you see a problem?
- 100
- 100
- 98
- 100
- 78
- 73
He would still have a 91% average in that class. Is that how you would look at it? Statistics that were used until recently showed decent appreciation but they were including a hot market. As we get past that we can look at them a little more realistically.
New numbers are coming soon.
And the (repeating of course) is a inside joke about Leroy Jenkins.
