America's Absolute WORST Selling Housing Markets... or maybe not

Hi Maureen -- I'm glad you wrote this, and I wish this post would get front page press in major newspapers around the country. Garbage in and garbage out.

According to what I've learned here on AR, that would be too wordy of a title ; )

MM,

This story is still evolving.  Our fair city has responded in such a strong way that the writer of the story has agreed to take a second look at the numbers.  She claims not to have meant to write about the "city of Denver but can understand why people take it that way."

Huh?

I'm not going to let this drop.  I'm so tired of the media not being held accountable for their writing. They hold such power and should be responsible in their research and what the ultimately say.  By not following the same rules we have too, they can devalue a neighborhood, a city a state and never look back!

It's Blockbusting on the national level.  We just can't let them get away with it anymore.

We can all accept and live with the truth, it's crap reporting like this we just don't need.

Maureen,

New York likely made the list in part because the condominium market, which drives much of Manhattan real estate, wasn't included in the analysis. Still, not everything's rosy in the Big Apple: Sale prices were down 13% between 2008 and 2009, and inventory has seen a 13% rise.

At least they ran a disclaimer: (The coop market is even bigger than the condo market) The NY MSA includes 3 states and many counties (The tri-state area) The MSA is an average of apples and oranges.

Forbes may be correct about a 13% decline in sales prices from 2008-2009, but we are in the second quarter of 2010. Real estate is not only local it moves fast.

The three major Manhattan brokers and the Real Estate Board of NY all put out quarterly market reports using our own data. We also do monthly snapshots from our own closed sales data. The NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Real Deal, NY Post, NY Daily News and most media outlets use the data from the brokerage reports in their articles about real estate. 4 million people visit our website each month. The data is on our website and the reports can be downloaded.

Our data is current. However, It is only about Manhattan and we do a seperate report for Brooklyn. Our data does not include all 5 boroughs of NYC, Westchester, Long Island, Norther NJ and Connecticut. Buyers are a little more specific as to where they want to live.

Here is a snipet of our current data:
First Quarter 2010 is 23% higher than First Quarter 2009. Once all First Quarter 2010 sales are tallied (due to the lag time between a closing and its recording not all sales are able to be included in this report), we estimate that the number of sales could be as much as 70% higher than a year ago. Resale activity was strongly improved with increased activity in both co-ops and condominiums and in all neighborhoods compared to a year ago. New development sales volume fell, however.

Maureen, I think when doing a report you need to use all data for all residential property types otherwise its useless. The forbes lists are nice entertainment. I enjoy them.

Not using all housing types when comparing markets. Leaving out the type of housing that most people live in doesn't paint an accurate picture. Single family homes in Manhattan are townhouses (brownstones or attached mansions). They range from $1 million to $25 million. The majority of people live in apartments in Manhattan. 

When I do comps for a seller, or when a property is appraised you can not compare a coop to a condo or a condo to a townhouse.

Maureen, so it sounds like Forbes.com is the "National Enquirer" of the RE world? No wait, "National Enquirer" actually breaks news that is true!

I'm glad Kristal isn't dropping it. I quit subscribing to our paper a couple of years ago because of their yellow journalism. Anything to sell a paper...

You really can't believe what you read or get reported to these days. It's all interpreted differently by different publications and networks. One day, Charlotte is the greatest place ever and has rising home sales. Then the next week, the news is bleak, our foreclosure filings are up, and sales are down from last year.

FYI, Francesca Levy called me yesterday to chat.  We can expect to see a deeper look into the stats for the Denver metro area, but not a retraction.  Apparently Forbes doesn't do retraction, they prefer to report deeper into the subject.

I don't agree with their position, but since the damage is already done, it hardly matters at this point. 

Francesca Levy feels her stats are right, that is the numbers she looked at are physically "correct."  However Zillow the source is flawed.

Francesca Levy like many new real estate reporters (and countless unsuspecting innocent consumers) look to Zillow as a credible reporting source.  While Zillow may that credit for reporting stats, the stats they report are not credible.

One thing that resonated in our conversation is how we in Denver responded to the Forbes article.  Larry McGee (my spouse) wrote a very nice blog post summing up the players in the response to Forbes.  It was he that took the reins and organized some of the players to combat the viral effect this inaccurate report was causing.  

Other news agencies were reading Ms. Francesca Levy's article and causing emotional reactions with buyers around the area.  Our brokerage had at least one couple freak out at the news, even calling attention to it as our agent had told them something totally different.

I explained to Ms. Levy the ramifications of her misplaced stats in our very emotional and sensitive market.  False news reports as this one undermine the confidence in consumers for no reason.

One thing I made very clear, we can all live with the truth.  May it be good or bad, the truth is hard to argue with.  Now if Forbes would just focus on finding truth instead of the silly fluff lists, I might even read what they write again. </not>

Then again I stopped my newspaper two years ago and don't miss it one iota.

The power of the media is not deserved.  Not when they can print crapola like this report, and still refuse to say they made a mistake in using Zillow as a source.  

Have we raised a generation of peeps who don't know how to take responsibility for their actions? </rhetorical question> 

Francesca told me their policy is NOT to ever issue retractions, but to respond with more reporting.

You know how I feel about that.

kk

Hi everyone,

Spencer from Zillow here. Sorry for the slow reply. Here's some info on this situation...

Earlier this month, Forbes.com published a story naming the “America’s Worst-Selling Housing Markets." The reporter used data from the National Association of Realtors, Moody’s Economy.com and Zillow to create an index that ranked metropolitan statistical areas. Much to the confusion of Denver real estate professionals, the Denver region was number two on the Forbes.com list.

One of the statistics Forbes.com cited in the article was a number from Zillow which Forbes.com referred to as “inventory”. There has been lots of confusion about this story and the data in it. Forbes published a follow-up last week, but I’d like to clarify a few points.

• Zillow did not name Denver one of the worst-selling housing markets. Forbes.com used one statistic from Zillow, along with statistics from NAR and Moody’s, to create their own index. Zillow was not consulted on the construction of this index.

• The number Forbes.com took off of our website was labeled on Zillow as "Homes for Sale on Zillow" in the month of January, and that's what it captured. It was never labeled as a total inventory number, and we never presented it to them as such, in writing or verbally.

o The methodology behind the statistic which the Forbes.com reporter pulled from Zillow.com showed the cumulative number of homes listed for sale on Zillow during the month, not a snapshot at a single point in time. This explains why the number wouldn’t match MLS inventory statistics, and further explains why the reporter shouldn’t have used it in the way that she did. (And had the reporter contacted us before writing the article, we would have recommended that she not use it in the way that she did.)

• In fact, the median daily number of listings in March posted on Zillow was 31,947 – extremely close to the 31,740 listings reported by a Denver economist using Metrolist MLS data. But the cumulative number of listings on Zillow during March (which is what the “Homes for Sale on Zillow” metric represents) was 43,157 listings. In other words, new listings came onto the market and some homes came off the market. The point is that the discrepancy was caused by the Forbes.com reporter not reading the fine print on the Zillow website and not calling her Zillow PR contact; it was not due to inaccuracies in Zillow data.

• Although our January listings number was representative of the number of homes on the market at the time, we have added partners in the past year, which have brought us new sources of listings. We routinely warn media against using year-over-year numbers when referring to homes on Zillow, since changes might be more reflective of new partnerships than market conditions.
  

• Contrary to some blog reports, Forbes.com did not say they would stop using Zillow data. They said they would limit the use of year-over-year comparisons when using the metric “Homes for Sale on Zillow.” (We support this decision, and as I said above we would have discouraged the use of this statistic anyway since the reporter was trying to show total overall inventory.) On the contrary, Forbes and Forbes.com (and dozens of other media sources) continue to use Zillow data, and in fact I’m personally one of five proud members of the Forbes Expert Real Estate Panel which conducts monthly online discussions of real estate issues (and frequently uses Zillow data).

We stand behind the accuracy of our data, but like all statistics, they can be misleading if not properly understood or explained. It’s regrettable that this situation occurred.

If you’d like a more in-depth look at Denver’s housing market, please see today’s blog post from Zillow Chief Economist Dr. Stan Humphries. As you can see, the housing market in Denver is actually doing quite well.