Over the past two days we have seen numbers for residential house price indices, mortgage applications and new home sales. There are caveats that go along with these numbers, e.g. how many sales were foreclosures, how much of the bidding wars were investors paying cash with the intention of renting out the acquired property, etc. Don’t get me wrong, good numbers are always better than bad numbers but numbers you can trust are the best.

The story on the commercial side of things is also a bit of a mystery as news that U.S. banks were charging off commercial loans at the fastest pace in 20 years graced the front of the C section of the WSJ recently with losses possibly reaching the $30BN mark by year end.