The Post told readers that the July plunge in existing home sales “was nearly twice as large as forecast.” This is a case where the Post apparently relied on the views of incompetent analysts.

The 27 percent drop in sales is very much in line with what would have been expected given the sharp falloff in applications for purchase mortgages in May. The vast majority of people who buy homes need to get a mortgage. If they are not applying for mortgages, then the odds are that they are not buying a home. Given the 6-8 week lag between applying for mortgages and the closing of a home sale, it was entirely predictable that this plunge in sales would show up in the July sales data. 

The only surprising part of this picture is that professional economists somehow were surprised. Of course most of these people also missed the $8 trillion housing bubble.