I’m sometimes not sympathetic when homebuilders complain to the press that they unfair press coverage, but consider this:

Yesterday, MSNBC ran a story that new home sales were down 2.6 percent in the month of June. Today’s front page headline story about housing is entitled “Still slumping: New-home Sales Drop Again.” If you actually read that article, you’ll discover that the figures quoted yesterday were actually revised significantly downward, from 2.6% to .6%! Yet, still the article depicts an environment of gloom and doom. Finally, if you read the last paragraph of the article, they break the figures down by geography and, lo and behold, the Northeast actually experienced a 5.3% new sales increase. (Good news for those of us in Philadelphia…)

It just goes to show that trusting national news outlets to gain a snapshot of regional real estate markets is risky business…

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25848138/