Housing Market: Fecal Matter, Meet the Whirly Thingie

Everyone knows that the summer months are the best months for residential real estate sales. So how did it go this year, in the summer of recovery?

2010 summer period: (June, July, August) 82,000 new homes sold (not seasonally adjusted). The worst summer sales period since record keeping began in 1963.

And how was August? Those numbers are just in, too:

2010: the worst August on record since 1963: 25,000 new homes sold (not seasonally adjusted). 1981 was the second worst August with 34,000 sales.

Yet the Dow is soaring(!). Perhaps the index should be loaded up with homebuilder stocks, so it could reflect reality...