After a slew of positive readings on the nation's housing recovery, sales of newly built homes in October were a big disappointment.
Despite the big public builders reporting big jumps in new orders and builder confidence positively leaping to the highest level since 2006, sales just didn't compute, and even September's numbers were revised down.
"The recovery in new home sales is looking a little weaker than we were previously led to believe," writes Paul Diggle of Capital Economics.
But Diggle points out the positives, specifically that the time between a completion and a new home sale has been falling dramatically, from over 14 months in late 2009 to just over 6 months today. The average historically is five months.