Housing Sales Up for the First Time in 3 Years

Alas, more bad news for conservative Republicans and Libertarians. It seems that those Obama administration financial incentives for home purchases have increased housing sales for the first time in three years. Funny how those government investments in the economy that aren't supposed to stimulate the economy actually do.

I suppose it's always possible that some of our Libertarian friends in the local blogosphere can always find some real estate brokers appointed to the Obama administration and somehow argue on the basis of it that this increase in sales is actually an inside job and a chimera.

UPDATE

Predictably Tyler Nixon, a writer at Delaware Libertarian, is loath to attribute any part of this good news to government intervention into the marketplace. He writes:

LOL. Yeah, this libertarian Republican is crying himself to sleep that the housing market (the one still largely free of government manipulation...a free market, if you will) is coming on strong, just as personal savings rates are on the rise and there is emerging an aversion to individual over-leveraging, much less leveraging generally, in oonsumer credit.

But notice what the Financial Times says:

New house sales in the US jumped by 11 per cent in June, providing some of the strongest evidence yet that the market has bottomed out after being savaged for three years.

There are increasing signs that the combined impact of falling prices and low mortgage rates, along with aggressive government incentives, is driving people back to the market and ­stirring sales. (emphasis mine)

My the contortions some people will go through to not admit they are wrong.

clipped from www.dollarsandsense.org New house sales in the US jumped by 11 per cent in June, providing some of the strongest evidence yet that the market has bottomed out after being savaged for three years. There are increasing signs that the combined impact of falling prices and low mortgage rates, along with aggressive government incentives, is driving people back to the market and ­stirring sales. The monthly rise was the sharpest in nearly nine years, far exceeding economists' expectations, and followed a revised increase of 2.4 per cent in the previous month. House sales rose to an adjusted annual rate of 384,000, the department of commerce said. "[This is] more evidence that a bottom is forming in the housing market, with new home sales confirming the signal provided by other housing data," said Alan Ruskin, a strategist at RBS Greenwich Capital.

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