NPR Overly Optimistic on Housing Rebound

Morning Edition had a segment on the housing recovery which substantially overstated its likely contribution to the recovery. The expert analyst the piece relied upon suggested that housing construction could add 1.0 percentage point to GDP growth over the next three years. This would imply a near doubling of its contribution over the last year.

According to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, housing has added an average of just less than 0.4 percentage points to growth over the last...