The headline of a 16.2 percent jump in new home sales sounds exciting until you realize that most of that was "profit-taking." The government reported a big jump in sales Thursday because, reports the Los Angeles Times, of deep discounting by builders.

We’re seeing some of that discounting with either "buyer incentives" advertised on billboards around town and with developers promising "bottom line pricing" to entice reluctant buyers. We’re long past the time where buyers knew it was their market. The biggest boost came in the South and in the West the increase was only 8 percent. The latest Las Vegas numbers in this week’s Business Press show that sales are still very sluggish here. And analysts are skeptical about the national numbers and expect them to be revised downwards.

But for homeowners trying to sell, the news is still bad. They can’t or won’t have the pricing flexibility of major homebuilders and the result is that inventories are up and sales numbers are down, reports the Associated Press. For the ninth straight month, sales have fallen. nationwide, they were down 2.6 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.99 million units and in the West down 1.7 percent.

And the jury is still out on whether there’s even going to be a recovery in 2008.