AP Pending Home Sales Report Avoids Naming the Percentage Increase

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By Tom Blumer (Bio | Archive)
June 9, 2008 - 15:57 ET
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I received this CNN e-mail this morning:

Pending home sales in April rose 6.3%, from March, but fell 13.1% from last year, according to a Realtor trade group.

Not bad. It might even be fair to say (emphasis: might) that the real estate market is on the long road back to something resembling normalcy.

The Associated Press's J.W. Elphinstone sanitized this pretty decent news, and I'll show you how:

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NAR: US pending home sales move higher in April

Pending home sales unexpectedly rose in April to the highest reading since October, an industry group said Monday, but experts say the large proportion of distressed property sales will continue to weigh down prices.

The National Association of Realtors' seasonally adjusted index of pending sales for existing homes rose to 88.2 from a March reading of 83.0, the lowest since the index was started in 2001. However, it's still 13 percent below April 2007's reading of 101.5.

Wall Street economists polled by Thomson/IFR had predicted the index would remain steady at 83.

Elphinstone managed to tell us the percentage decline from last year, but never told us the percentage increase over the previous month. The AP reporter only told us the change in the index, and left it to the reader to calculate the increase (5.2 points divided by 83.0 is 6.3%, rounded). The average reader probably won't do the calculation, and the 13% decline will be their primary takeaway.

If you go to the realtor group's press release, you'll see that they had the 6.3% increase in their second paragraph. Elphinstone had to work to take it out.

Isn't that "clever"?

Even the captioning of the pictures at the story link makes sure to mention the 13% decline in pending sales from a year ago while only saying that they "unexpectedly increased in April to the highest reading since October." Again, the 6.3% increase is nowhere to be found.

It's just another example of the subtle methods reporters who seem not to want relatively good economic news to get out use to obscure it.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

—Tom Blumer is president of a training and development company in Mason, Ohio, and is a contributing editor to NewsBusters


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Tom, you're sharp as always...

June 9, 2008 - 16:20 ET by Gary Hall

Tom, you're sharp as always... I'd calculated, in advance of course, that there was only a 6.1% chance that you'd not catch this most recent AP effort to shape public ignorance. (;~> gary

Thanks, but ....

June 9, 2008 - 20:51 ET by Tom Blumer

.... I feel like I'm missing at least 80% of their BS, there's so much of it.

I wonder if Associated

June 9, 2008 - 16:29 ET by stratman

I wonder if Associated Press's J.W. Elphinstone would ignore an additional 6.3% return on his home or investments.  Maybe he should to uphold his journalist reputation and Liberal principles.

RRAM Tough! 

Under Bush, anytime there

June 9, 2008 - 17:21 ET by kg

Under Bush, anytime there is a positive the media adds the largest negative possible in the article.

 

"Forget change, I want improvement!"

1 in every 200 homes in foreclosure

June 9, 2008 - 19:09 ET by Copperhead Ridge

I heard some genious on CNN say that the other morning. I don't know if that statistic is correct, but CNN would never say that one half of one percent were in foreclosure.

Buyers' market? A house near mine was on the market for seven days and the sellers got their asking price.

A young couple bought a house near mine and paid nearly a half million dollars for it. He ran a couple of businesses and his live-in was a stripper.

It's in foreclosure. He was a fraud, and she, well, was a stripper (a danged fine looking lady). They should've been in a $150,000 house in a tract subdivision instead of where they were. They're part of the statistics, though.

Now, the Dems want those of us who took care of our finances to bail people like that out of a jam. Why don't they bail me out for the thousands of dollars gone from my 401(k)?

Copper...

June 9, 2008 - 19:15 ET by Clear thinker

As to your last paragraph.... they would if they thought it would garner them enough votes.

Politician = Scum

"Abstain from McCain"