I am not so excited about home sales data, housing starts or median prices, but I am cautiously optimistic about this: the latest OFHEO data on home prices using repeat sales data shows an uptick in home values from December to January for the US as a whole (1.9%) and for all regions but the Pacific. What explains this? Well it could be an anomaly - sales were scarce and this could cause results that do not represent an overall trend - and it could be the lowering cost of mortgages along with some pretty cheap homes. Who knows, but it is better than another bad report in any event. We will know soon whether this is a robust result when the other repeat sales data index, the Case-Shiller, releases the January numbers next week.
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