NewsTarget.com - "Columnist: When the U.S. housing bubble bursts, it will not burst gently" (1-22-07)

"Official statistics are so massaged and seasonally adjusted and weighted-averaged and smoothed that I often find them hard to believe," the Canadian markets analyst for Thomson Financial says. For example, official National Association of Realtors statistics predicted a 6.1 percent rise in the national median house price in 2006. The actual national median house price was still down 2 percent between January and November of 2006, but Koza notes that market experts have called the drop as a "healthy correction" and not a predictor of drop in house prices. "At least, not yet," Koza says.