Did housing coverage miss it?

Alan Abelson of Barron’s has an interesting column in the latest issue in which he suggests that the business media missed an important aspect regarding the recent housing sales data.

Abelson writes, “And it especially grieves us to admit, that our beloved media, for all its virtues, can be somewhat wanting in furnishing economic coverage. The melancholy fact is that our ink, online and TV colleagues can be too easily snookered by Washington, Wall Street and Corporate America, all of whom are desperately peddling recovery rather than reality.

“Take the big play given to the 3.6% rise in sales of existing homes last month, which helped power a nearly 200-point rally in the Dow that lifted that venerable index over 9000 for the first time since January. Adding to the excited stock market response was the refrain in virtually every story, whether recounted in print or on the Internet and the tube, that this was the third month in a row of higher sales, signaling that the long-awaited but frustratingly elusive bottom in housing had been reached. Really?

“As Mark Hanson of the eponymous real-estate advisory points out, it’s a seasonal phenomenon that until recent years has happened every year.

“Indeed, the wonder of it is that, with prices soft and mortgage rates down, sentiment better and supply restrained by foreclosure moratoriums, sales weren’t higher than a year ago. Some of those benign factors are changing, and not for the better: Rates are creeping up, moratoriums are ending and foreclosures are on the rise.”

Read more here.