Sping slump, not thaw, on housing - and cars

Tentative signs say April, while not as bad as March’s 18-year-worst slump in sales, will show another decline in housing sells.

Realtors’ associations may try to blame the subprime mortgage issue this month, as they blamed the weather for the March bad news.

Don’t buy it; the market was in trouble even without the subprime issue. Bubble-like trouble. This just made it worse yet, on top of what was already bad.

And, related to that, it wasn’t a good month in Detroit either. Why? In part, the housing sag, removing more and more home equity credit from the auto-buying market. For the alleged Big Three, vs. Japanese competition, the high reliance on pickups and SUVs in the face of another gas price surge doesn’t help.