Who spiked the water cooler at the Union-Tribune office? Or, maybe, who stopped spiking it?
Ah, I kid because I love. But seriously, their latest piece on the sharp rise in mortgage defaults is unusually somber. And it has some cool graphs.
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May 15, 2006 @ 10:03 PM
I love the spin the U-T put
I love the spin the U-T put on this one. They rush to assure us in the second paragraph that “the spike doesn’t threaten most homeowners, many of whom have little or no mortgage debt”. Then, the picture is of a woman in Hemet, which I interpret to mean that they searched high and low all throughout San Diego County and couldn’t find a single person in default. Heck, they had to go all the way to Riverside county before they ran across some poor soul that couldn’t make her house payments.
I’m thinking that by the end of the year, they won’t have to look nearly so far to find folks getting squeezed by their ARM’s constantly adjusting upwards.
May 15, 2006 @ 11:44 PM
The graphs are very
The graphs are very interesting… 84,000 defaults over the prior 5 year down-cycle. That’s with a correction of about 40% in price to income ratio. If we see a reset to the mean of historical P/I, my back of the envelope prediction would be more than 150k forclosures in SD over the next 5 years, probably upwards of 200k.
May 16, 2006 @ 5:38 AM
Funny response…I wonder
Funny response…I wonder why they didn’t just interview one of the hundreds or thousands of local San Diegans who received a NOD. I could send them a list of about 50 people just in Poway. They would need to pay for access to RealtyTrac or foreclosure.com. Realtors get this free, I think.
At least the U-T stopped publishing “Median Price is Up Again” stories. I notice they try real hard to present both sides.
May 16, 2006 @ 6:37 AM
The UT must be very careful
The UT must be very careful not to piss off the real estate industry’s builders, sellers, mortgagers, etc.. as that specific industry, along with the car dealers, pay for 75% of their local advertising “spam”.
Having your biggest advertiser pissed off at a story you run is NOT in the best interest of “Reporting” or should I say “Cheerleading” ? Especially in the front office.
Its NOT news anymore, its beholden propaganda.
Life is one big “Infomercial”
Life lesson today: “Believe 1/3rd of what you read, and NONE of what you see on the TV”.
May 16, 2006 @ 8:43 AM
Check out
Check out http://www.urbansurvival.com for the news events that the mainstream media SHOULD be publishing.
The editor, George Ure, calls himself the “people’s economist”. He deals in reality instead of all the BS that passes for ‘news’ these days.
I ended my U-T subscription about 18 months ago. What a joke of a newspaper – and in a city that is supposedly the 7th largest in the country.
May 16, 2006 @ 8:52 AM
“Overstreet, 47, a health
“Overstreet, 47, a health care worker, lost her job in December and began having trouble making her mortgage payments. She said she thought she would be able to make a living as a real estate agent, but she hasn’t sold a home.”
I’m confused: did she lose her job as a healthworker and then went into real estate? Or did she leave her healthcare job and go into real estate voluntarily? Either way, what a double whammy.
I can’t help shake the feeling that the UT is somehow trying to subconsciously tell me (the reader) “oh, but don’t worry about San Diego, people. This person lives in Hemet and it is only the outlying communities that may be affected. Everything is just fine here….yep….nothing to worry about.”
“End of line.”
May 18, 2006 @ 6:24 AM
Nobody loses their job in
Nobody loses their job in health care unless they are incompetent. There’s simply too much of a demand in that field for someone to be let go without fault. In general, anyone with a nursing degree the paper will print that they are. She sounds like a medical assistant or a lab assistant making $10/hour. Even if she had not lost her job she wouldn’t be able to make the increase in payment when her ARM reset.
May 16, 2006 @ 12:31 PM
PJ
UT probably had to cave
PJ
UT probably had to cave in to all the other downward press.
http://money.aol.com/cnnmoney/realestate/canvas3/_a/real-estate-cools-down/20060515122209990001
If CNN is saying that real estate is down, you can’t continue to be the only positive spinner in the news crowd. Otherwise, UT would appear disingenuous…
May 16, 2006 @ 2:10 PM
They’re reporting it finally
They’re reporting it finally because the Duke Cunningham scandal has faded away and they’re looking for something, hell they’re looking for ANYthing to pull in readers.
Pete