Confusing statistics are up 18.7 percent on the same period a year ago.  At least that’s how it looks to me.

As I flick through a selection of the online newspapers that accompany my early morning cup of coffee, I am warned that consumer spending is up a whopping 2.3 percent.

I am also warned that this is down a worrying 1.86 percent on last year.  Although it is up a whimsical 1.14 percent on the seasonally-adjusted average for the quarter that ended just over two months ago.  (Or was that just over two years ago?)

Apparently, Middletown is now the sixth best place in the Asia-Pacific region to purchase a sultana scone.  Metropolis City has replaced Somewhere-or-Other as the second most expensive place to have your socks dry cleaned.  And an airport that has yet to be built is the seventh most popular among people who never travel by air.

It seems that attaching a number – any number – creates the impression that the information is solid.  A number says: this is not just an opinion; this is a fact.  Trust it.

Although, as Albert Einstein once observed, ‘not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted’.

By unhappy coincidence, I recently received three different property newsletters on the same day.  Each made extensive use of numbers to tell me what was happening – and what was ‘set to’ happen – to the property market in my little corner of the world.

Thanks to these carefully prepared newsletters, I can now report that property prices are either rising or falling.  And I can tell you that rental rates are flat or rising slightly or possibly rising alarmingly.

I can also tell you that residential property prices are set to rise, set to fall, or set to plummet by as much as 30 percent.  At the same time, mortgage rates will ease slightly, remain about the same, or rise by as much as 2.65 percent.

So there you are.  And these are not just opinions.  They are facts.  There are numbers attached. – Jack Scrivano