Home sales are on the up and up

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Numbers out on home sales this week are better than expected, but new car sales are lower than they’ve been in nearly 30 years.

David Oldham, a 30 year auto industry veteran and general manager of Ray Skillman Northeast, says although new car sales in August were lower nationally than they’ve been in 28 years that’s not the case locally.

"It's a tough economy out there. But I will say this, as far as automotive sales in the Indianapolis area they're still good... not as good as they've been in the past, but they're good."

Pending sales of existing homes took an unexpected 5.2 percent increase in July. And rates for 30 year fixed mortgages hit a decade low of 4.32 percent Thursday.

Indianapolis Home Improvement company owner Jeremy Stephens doesn’t see what the numbers might indicate.

"How tough is it to make a living these days. It's gettin really, I mean, we've downsized in manpower. I had about 6 or 7 working, we're down to 2 or 3 right now," he said.

On CNNMONEY.COM, an article by Chris Isidore touts this as the strongest jobs recovery in decades, saying job growth has started earlier this time than in past recessions.

24 Hour News 8 asked University of Indianapolis Assistant Professor of Finance Rachel Smith to look at the article.

"Yea, I don't see a lot of data supporting that. A lot of information we're seeing in the economic data coming out doesn't supply a lot of support to substantiate that," she says. Instead, Smith sees a lot of consumer uncertainty and that she says, will mean a long slow recovery.

Another stat out today shows initial jobless claims dropped by 6,000 last week. But 472,000 people still applied for unemployment benefits. Friday, we'll get another indication of the stre