Ignore Monthly Changes in Housing Data!

The main thing that careful observers know from watching housing data over the years is that the monthly data should be largely ignored when assessing the housing market. The point here is that random factors have a large impact on monthly sales and price numbers, so that the noise often overwhelms the actual information about the housing market in a single month's release.

To see the point, let's start with existing home sales. The Realtors reported a small drop in February from an upwardly ...