Following the blockbuster housing starts and permits earlier this week, there was much hope that finally the NAR would confirm that the housing recovery was more than just another weather fabrication, and once again the dead cat has bounced, overtaking the sales high from last July. Alas, moments ago the NAR reported that after rising by 5.21 million units in March, April existing home sales dropped -3.3%, well below the 0.8% expected increase to 5.23 million.

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As the NAR chief economist Larry Yun reported, sales in April failed to keep pace with March. “April’s setback is the result of lagging supply relative to demand and the upward pressure it’s putting on prices,” he said. “However, the overall data and feedback we’re hearing from Realtors continues to point to elevated levels of buying interest compared to a year ago. With low interest rates and job growth, more buyers will be encouraged to enter the market unless prices accelerate even higher in relation to incomes.”

Unless of course low interest rates are not so low in the future.

And while we understand that increasingly more potential buyers are simply priced out of a market that only the wealthiest can access, we are confused by Yun’s statement that there is lagging supply: after all the NAR in the very next sentence admits that “total housing inventory at the end of April increased 10.0 percent to 2.21 million existing homes available for sale. Unsold inventory is at a 5.3–month supply at the current sales pace, up from 4.6 months in March.”

So… perhaps we need to double seasonally adjust the inventory as well?

The good news for yet one more month, is that millionaires are price indescriminate, and the median price rose once more:

The median existing–home price for all housing types in April was $219,400, which is 8.9 percent above April 2014. This marks the 38th consecutive month of year–over–year price gains and is the largest since January 2014 (10.1 percent).