Blogs keep real estate media honest
February 5th, 2011, 1:00 am · 1 Comment · posted by Jon Lansner
Five years ago this month, this real estate blog began. We won’t get too sentimental but just note it’s been a wild ride. In honor of our 5th anniversary, we’ll use our Insider Q&A in this and coming weeks to discuss blogging’s role in the real estate game.
This week, we chat with Rich Toscano, author of the Piggington blog — “Professor Piggington’s Econo-Almanac for the Landed Poor” — that tracked the San Diego market since 2004..
Us: What has real estate blogging done for the housing market in terms of getting news and views out to the public? Has that changed in recent years?
Rich: Blogs were instrumental in getting the bearish case out to the public during the boom, as you rarely heard that side of things in the mainstream press. The blogs have gained a lot of respect since then. Back in the boom, it was generally considered to be a sufficient criticism of something to simply point out that “some blogger” had written it. That’s no longer the case. At the same time, the quality of real estate reporting in the mainstream media has vastly improved. I imagine that the mainstream media stepped up its game due to a combination of the blogs being seen as viable competition, and embarrassment about dropping the ball during the bubble.
Us: What’s needed to take real estate information to the next level? If you had the brightest minds in the room — and a budget to match — what would you tell your Dream Team to build?
Rich: Well, this might not surprise you, but my dream team would be a bunch of nerds and their goal would be to improve the available data. The relative lack of consistent, historical data is the single biggest hurdle to doing a better job analyzing the market. How helpful would it be, for instance, to be able to look back on a long-term historical series of rents, incomes, and home prices within a neighborhood, and adjusted for home quality, rather than just lumping an entire ZIP code together? Something like that would be of great benefit to analysts and potential buyers in figuring out our complex and varied market. It wouldn’t be easy develop and populate that data, but you did give me a big budget.
Us: Real estate has gone from a business in full-speed dive into a crash to a deep morass to fragile-iffy bottom. At least, to our eyes. Has that loss of drama hurt the public’s interest in the real estate news and views?
Rich: Because it’s boring. It was exciting when the bubble was in full swing and everyone was acting crazy, and it was terrifying when the market was in a freefall. A market that’s just bouncing along, where nothing changes drastically from month to month, is simply not very interesting to many people. As far as I’m concerned, that’s fine — part of the problem during the bubble was that people became completely obsessed with real estate. Now houses neither a get-rich-quick scheme nor an ongoing disaster, but just a place to live, which I think is a healthier outlook.
Us: Lots of discussion about angry online debate. Real estate’s no exception it would seem. Is this a problem with housing discussions, perhaps crowding out some important thought-makers? Can anything done to make debate more civil?
Rich: It’s better than it used to be, at least … emotions ran very high during the bubble. Now it’s just like everything else. One of America’s favorite past times seems to be acting like jerks in anonymous forums. I don’t really know what could be done about it except for enforcing civility via iron-fisted forum moderation. That could become a full-time job, though.
Us: OK. Tough, last one: What will housing do over the next five years?
Rich: Five years down the road, my guess is that home prices will be marginally higher in nominal terms, but lower in terms of incomes and rents.
“One of America’s favorite past times seems to be acting like jerks in anonymous forums.” Forums have become a haven for sociopaths, the lonely, and opinionated cowards. Perhaps that’s who we really are.
“One of America’s favorite past times seems to be acting like jerks in anonymous forums.” Forums have become a haven for sociopaths, the lonely, and opinionated cowards. Perhaps that’s who we really are.
“One of America’s favorite past times seems to be acting like jerks in anonymous forums.” Forums have become a haven for sociopaths, the lonely, and opinionated cowards. Perhaps that’s who we really are.
“One of America’s favorite past times seems to be acting like jerks in anonymous forums.” Forums have become a haven for sociopaths, the lonely, and opinionated cowards. Perhaps that’s who we really are.
“One of America’s favorite past times seems to be acting like jerks in anonymous forums.” Forums have become a haven for sociopaths, the lonely, and opinionated cowards. Perhaps that’s who we really are.
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