Lereah's Most Recent Deception

Recently, Florida Paradise Lost reported how the National Association Realtors, kept on revising their forecasts for 2006 existing home sales. However, the NYTimes quoted David Lereah who is the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors as saying:

“The boom is cooling now,” said David Lereah, the chief economist for the association, who added that falling home sales have been “a bit worse than we had anticipated.”

The group said that it now expected sales to fall further than it has said in the past — about 7.5 percent this year compared with an earlier projection of a 5 percent decline.

As chief economist of the National Association of Realtors (NAR), David Lereah, is responsible for the economic forecasts. Back on October 28th, 2005 the NAR forecasted that:

Existing-home sales are projected to decline 3.5 percent in 2006 to 6.86 million. New-home sales, seen to grow by 8.0 percent to 1.30 million in 2005, are expected to fall 4.5 percent to 1.24 million next year. The figures for 2006 would be the second highest year for each sector.

So on October 28th, 2005 the David Lereah and the NAR forecasted that there would be a decline of 3.5% in existing home sales for 2006 compared to 2005. Now, Mr. Lereah is forecasting a decline of 7.5% for 2006.

The September 2006 forecast is more then double the decline of the October 2005 forecast. Despite the large adjustment from his October 2005 forecast, David Lereah says that the decline is "a bit worse than we had anticipated." This is deceptive. Due to his cheerleading and continuing deceptions Mr. Lereah cannot be trusted.