When April new homes sales came in worse than expected most observers might have thought this was bad news about the state of the economy, but not the WSJ. The headline of the WSJ article told readers: "New-Home Sales Rise as Prices Tumble." The lead sentence began: "new-home sales climbed a second time in three months during April, an encouraging sign for the housing market," before noting that prices are still falling.
Okay, what was the upturn in April? Well, the annual selling rate of 352,000 was 1,000 above the downwardly revised level of 351,000 reported in March. This number was the third worst figure on record and was 34% below its year ago level.
The basic story was that January housing numbers were awful across the board, presumably in large part because of worse than usual weather. The more recent data looks good only compared with January. Otherwise it is about as bad as can get, but let's give the WSJ credit for this effort at economic cheerleading.
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