Consensus (not Confucius) Says

Every time I see quotes from news releases and articles saying things such as results came in “above consensus” or “below consensus” I imagine a room of seriously confused economists, because consensus always seems to be wrong. This morning existing home sale data was published by the National Association of Realtors. Prior to release, I finalized my model inputs and could see existing home sales would be down YOY and MOM. I forecasted 345,000 non-seasonally adjusted, and they came in at 331,000.