Southern California housing price confusion

Time for me, once again, to point out the ridiculousness of single-month housing data.

As the story in today's LA Times points out, Southern California housing prices are up dramatically over last January and down dramatically over December.

Huh?

As I've said many times before, a single month is too small a sample to be meaningful when home purchases are at least a 30-day event.

But this story so dramatically makes my point, I had to give it special attention. Here, the article even points out its own futility:

• The month-to-month decline was attributable in part to the higher percentage of cheaper Inland Empire homes that sold in January compared with December as buyers in pricier locales stopped searching during the holidays and investors and first-time buyers made up a larger share of shoppers.

The writer is flat out telling you how flawed the information is.

This is why we only look at QUARTERLY data.