Maven: Too Much Housing Hope

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My goodness, was that easy. Did you hear? The housing correction is over. Our long national nightmare is finished, almost before it even began. It must be high time to jump whole-hog back to all those former lovers: Toll Brothers(TOL), KB Home(KBH), D.R. Horton(DHI), Pulte Homes(PHM) and Hovnanian(HOV).

The Business Press Maven is, as you probably guessed, being his normal haughty, sarcastic and by-and-large intolerable self. But who on God's green earth can blame me?

As you know, The Business Press Maven is always highly critical of the business media for allowing a pattern of three to qualify as a trend. But apparently now two can do the deed. The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing homes blipped up 0.6% in November, following a 0.5% increase in October.

How did those modest little facts play?

In its lead, the Associated Press declared that "the worst of the downturn for the battered housing market may be over." Lower down, it hedges, mentioning those ever-present and always plural "analysts" who say that "this year's slide in housing is starting to bottom out." The Business Press Maven seconds that with his first-ever ironclad guarantee. After all, with today being the last business day of the year, the housing market doesn't have too much longer to slide in 2006.