Today, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released their Existing Home Sales Report for August showing a slight bump-up in sales coming on the back of July's truly epic collapse in demand as the government's phony baloney tax credit sponsored surge in home sales activity waned.Single family home sales increased 7.4% since July but declined 19.2% compared to August 2009 while prices declined slightly since last month remaining 1.2% above the level seen last year.
It's important to note that inventory is continuing to mount with the latest level rising 2.7% above the level seen in August 2009 which, in light of the current slow sales pace, resulted in a massive monthly supply of 11.3.
Clearly, all can now see that the government's housing tax credit was not only a gimmick... it was a complete failure, a massively wasteful and expensive handout to the housing industry and a futile and likely very dangerous exercise in market manipulation.
More importantly, today's results demonstrate that the Keynesian trickery of targeted "stimulus" is simply failed policy and has revealed those who have preach its benefits as chumps and fools.
The following charts (click for full-screen dynamic version) shows national existing single family home sales, median home prices, inventory and months of supply since 2005.
