The Union-Tribune recently issued a piece about last month’s housing numbers. As is usual in the media these days, the tone was "cautiously optimistic." In other words, things have seriously slowed down, but the median price is still hanging in there… so things are going to be fine, right? Karevoll illustrates the sentiment nicely:
“It looks to me as if the market, at all levels, has ratcheted itself back a notch but is still stable,” said DataQuick analyst John Karevoll. “There is nothing I can see that looks particularly ominous.”
In a sense, Karevoll is absolutely right. His job is to interpret the monthly numbers, and as he points out, there is nothing terribly ominous about all this short-term data. There is plenty to worry about, of course—prices that are entirely unhinged from fundamentals, huge exposure to variable-rate debt, and an economy dependent on real estate being a few.
But these factors do not show themselves in the monthly sales data, and those who are not looking at the big picture are soothed. For now, anyway.
I was interested to note that the UT cited the percentage of zip codes with year-over-year median price declines (that number being 25%). This is a type of stat we’ve been looking at for a while in the monthly reports, as it helps identify pockets of price weakness even if the overall countywide market appears strong. Hopefully they will continue to look for novel ways to slice and dice the data.
I honestly don’t understand
I honestly don’t understand why the folks at the U-T are such persistent cheerleaders. Isn’t an informed populace, making sound financial decisions, in everyone’s best interest? How does it help this city if hundreds of middle class families end up in foreclosure proceedings?
I agree. I wrote a Letter
I agree. I wrote a Letter to the Editor, outlining my reasons for a housing bubble bust. To my knowledge, it was not printed. I emailed several times to Roger Showley, one of the housing writers, to inform him of reality. It would help if others did the same: keep writing to the editors, journalists, and reporters. I even called and e-mailed Tom Fudge, who does the These Days show on KPBS.
These guys use the data that’s out there (Dataquick, NAR), and interview industry experts (Alan Gin, David Lereah, SD Chamber of Commerce, realtors). For them to get it right, they need to speak with the few economists who have a grip on reality. Furthermore, they won’t interview someone without industry-level credentials. So the people they speak with all give the same hype.
The only way to break this cycle is to write a letter, present your own story that they may wish to write about, and wait for the data to come in from Dataquick.
Local newspapers still get a
Local newspapers still get a lot of advertising from realtors, who (along with lenders) are still trying to boost up the market. So, it stands to reason that the newspapers would put the best possible spin on the situation.
Hard to say. You may be
Hard to say. You may be right that it is not out of willful intent to deceive, but there are a handful of people with credentials who will say the market is primed for a correction. Many folks at the Andersen School at UCLA and Robert Shiller are in that minority. Although their numbers are small, they aren’t that hard to find. For whatever reason, pressure from advertisers, laziness, personal greed (fear of losing money in their own homes), the folks at the UT are doing a poor job of giving a balanced picture.
Who is this Kenneth Rosen? At UC Berkeley? I thought you had to have brains at Cal. Cash out sellers, lack of affordability for new buyers, rising interest rates. Put them all together and you get… “soft landing”. Honestly, is a guy at Cal that incapable of connecting the dots or is someone blackmailing him?
Here is an interesting
Here is an interesting development. Here is a link to a Weekly Standard article. It was written by Andrew Laperriere who is a managing director in the Washington office of ISI Group, a Wall Street economic research and brokerage firm. The reason I find this interesting is because of Weekly Standard’s political leanings. To me this isn’t really a political issue, its a market debate. But Conservatives and Republicans have the most to lose from a bursting bubble so there is no motivation for the Weekly Standard to hype the bubble. The purpose of this article was to give warning and prepare the conservative punditry that this bubble is real and its happening and it could impact the 06 and 08 elections.
I e-mailed this article to several people at the LA Times, making the point that it would be refreshing if they would realistically address the “off the chart metrics” of current home values. I haven’t seen one of those articles yet.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/053ajgwr.asp?pg=1
Mike Freeman from the U-T
Mike Freeman from the U-T called me several times last year to ask what I was seeing in the condo market. (Back when I was an agent in San Diego.) I would spend 30 minutes on the phone with him telling him how when comparing model matches where I mostly worked (I-15 corridor)…prices were down…showings were down….sellers were mostly unrealistic in their expectations….I would even give him specific examples of properties falling out of escrow…then going back into escrow at lower prices a few weeks later. These sellers could see that the longer they stayed on the market…the lower sales price they might get…Despite these specific examples he seemed to dismiss them as extreme cases because the seller may have been really motivated to sell. I tried to show him that in a market of increasing properties for sale and decreasing demand…the motivated sellers will have to step forward and lower their prices..thus setting the new true market value.
I would always read his article the next day….and it would still be surprisingly bullish……