Is Larry Yun Intentionally Making A Joke Out Of The Bad Housing Data?

But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.  - Adolph Hitler, "Mein Kampf"

Seriously, is National Association of Realtors chief economist, Larry Yun, trying to make a joke out of using the "bad weather" excuse for poor housing market sales?

As I have shown repeatedly, the poor housing market sales results are a direct result, for many fundamental reasons, of the demand-side of the market falling away.  In fact, RealtyTrac just released a report yesterday that showed institutional investor purchases of homes fell to its lowest level in January since March 2012:  LINK  That has nothing to do with the weather in any part of the country.

However, I have provided links in previous articles that show that, on average across the country, the weather during January was about the same as it has been over the last 10 years.  In fact, in California it was warmer than normal. 

So why is Larry Yun insistent upon shoving the "bad weather" narrative down our throats every time the NAR releases a negative housing market report.  For instance, just today, the NAR released its Pending Home Sales index for January.  It actually showed a slight uptick for January from December but was below what was expected by analysts.  So what does Larry have to say:  "Ongoing disruptive weather patterns in much of the U.S. inhibited home shopping"  (LINK).

Well, let's cut to the chase.  What really happened according the NAR data?  For sake of simplicity, here's a graphic pictorial of the distribution of the NAR data for January from Zerohedge:

 

(click on graph to enlarge)

Now, from what we know about the weather patterns across the country, California/the West was warmer than normal, the Northeast and the South were about average with a few extreme bad weather days  and the Midwest was also about average with some unusually cold days sprinkled in.  

So how come the biggest drop in pending home sales occurred in the area where the weather was warmer than usual and the areas that might have been affected by the weather show gains for January?

The only conclusion I can draw is one of three possibilities:   1) Larry is tragically stupid;  2) Larry is a pathological liar; or 3)  Larry is making a joke out of the fact that the housing market is beginning to collapse.

Larry, if you happen to see this, please either leave a comment or respond with your explanation to my email as to why your statement about the weather is so obviously wrong.  I encourage everyone to send this blog post to the NAR and maybe they can issue an explanation other than putting out the above blueprint from "Mein Kampf."