Housing markets are seasonal, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Its May so we would expect the housing activity would be higher than it would be say in January. The weather is warmer, the birds are chirping, Lawrence is saying things are great. So whats the problem?

You need to compare the current housing market with the same period in the preceding year or years.

Is June better than December in terms of sales activity and price trends? How about May versus January?

Using this logic, these articles seem a little light.

* Sales activity was higher in April ’08 than July ’07 in Southern California

* Housing starts were better in April ’08 than October ’07

Yet in markets like Sacramento County, median sales price is down 40% since August 2005. As Andrew Leonard in his column writes:

>A 40 percent drop. If those are the kinds of numbers required to goose the market back into action, the entire economy still has a lot of pain coming.

However, I like the decline from peak comparisons, so disregard my argument for using seasonality. I am either hot or cold on it, depending on the weather.