Fed Mortgage Subsidy Drives Buying Panic In Existing Homes To Bubble Levels

http://wallstreetexaminer.com/2013/04/29/fed-mortgage-subsidy-drives-buying-panic-in-existing-homes-to-bubble-levels/

The NAR Pending Home Sales data for March is a measure of current sales as of the date of the contract. It’s the closest thing we have to a real time measure of sales activity in the existing home market. The NAR’s “Existing Home Sales” represents the closing, that is the cash settlement of the sale reflected in Pending Home Sales, usually two months later on average.  Existing sales represent historical data that’s two months old, plus the lag of the release, which is another month, so the NAR’s existing home sales data is 3 months stale. The release of that data simply confirms what we already knew from the pending home sales data.