Try as I might to be objective here, the NAR makes it really hard. And I’m not just speaking for me, I’m speaking for every financial reporter worth his or her salt on the planet. The most recent press statement covering the trade organization’s expectations for 2008 came out earlier this week and actually said the following:
…the housing market will improve from a steady unleashing of pent-up demand, and from a wide abundance of safer mortgage products.
Yet the NAR is now predicting a 2008 that looks like this: flat demand for existing housing, no recovery for new housing, and prices that are at best even. Does any of this sound remotely like “unleashing pent-up demand” to you? And does the umpteeth downward revision in the NAR’s forecast inspire anything remotely like confidence in anyone? And yet Yun ends up on Bloomberg with a straight face. Maybe he makes more sense in person, I don’t know.
