New home sales down nationally but up in the West

From the notoriously revised Commerce Department statistics, new home sales fell to a 12-year low in November but were up by 4% in the West. According to the USA Today story:

The sales pace for November was much weaker than economists were expecting. They were predicting sales to drop around 1.8%, to a pace of 715,000.

I take two things from this article: (1) Economics always offer guesstimates and so never really know for sure (such is the nature of predictions, although they do offer solace to some people which keeps psychics in business); and (2) Expect revisions next month from the Commerce Department since the survey less than 5% of permit reporting places nationally.