Members of the Media reporting on the housing market - would you shut the hell up?!!

totally agree! That's why I work so hard toi publish detailed stats for MY MARKET and call out the differences between the national press.

It's also interesting that the press MAY be absolutely accurate in what they say about "NATIONAL NUMBERS". BUT, what my local clients fail to understand is that national stats really only do any good for "NATIONAL STATS USERS"...ie. National banks, National lenders, National building products manufacturers. They mean absolutely NOTHING to the home seller on 1st St., Mytown.

Yes, the media can't stop helping it seems.  In my local area they rarely interview local agents (hey call me!) but often report on the real estate market from what the national media says.

Lori, you don't seem to have problems expressing yourself. . your title is one of my favorites I read in the last 12 months!

I'm subscribing to your blog now. .

<clicking non-existent "like" button>

Great post, Lori, and I love the title.

I still wonder how much some of this irresponsible reporting has contributed to keeping the market down and scaring people out of buying, then there were the handful of journalists a year or so ago who seemed to be promoting "walking away" from upside-down loans on top of it.

As they say... if you see it in the media... it already happened.

Just finished by busiest January ever, and with 9 days to go, February is already my busiest February ever (been in business for 9 years).  The market is back, and my wife is seeing buyers lose out on homes to faster acting buyers or better bids.  Things here seem to be picking up pretty well, not that any reporters have noticed...

Hi Lori, I just read Bob Stewarts's post this morning about how agents (ActiveRain agents specifically :) -- could contribute to and "help" the media get it right.  I don't think we are supposed to put links in each other's comments -- so just go to Bob's blog page and see his post, The Newspaper Is Not Dead . . . It Just Needs Your Help.  Thought you might be interested in the idea he proposes.

Lori,

We all spend sooo much time refuting bad advice folks get from the press about real estate. I too am tired of it!

Lori, the media thrives on doom and gloom. Unfortunately, people listen to it and act on it. It is getting old.

I have been saying the same thing during the past two years.  If the media had not created a panic in potential buyers that could actually afford a purchase many of the problems we face today would not have happened.  Plus like you say every area has it's own market.

Totally agree!

Lori - THAN YOU for saying it.  And I am with you 100%.  I am so sick of the way the media portrays most everything these days.........first of all there are too many of them.  They make mountains out of molehills and they report things to death.  And of course........they don't report things accurately.  They report based on what they think attracts attention.  IRRESPONSIBLE!

Lori - You go girl - I'm with you.  We educate our buyers and sellers everyday only for the media to overrun us.  

I have been lucky the past few month, actually educating our local housing report writer for the local newspaper a few months ago of how the housing report does not reflect local housing stats.  He saw where I get my numbers and he told me where he got his numbers from.  I studied his stats and told him the reason for his inaccuracy and he somewhat agreed and now puts in a caveat of how he arrived to the stats.

Once a month I write my market report for my county that is published in our polk-homes insert published on Saturday. 

Worse yet.  The national stats want to combine MD/VA/DC into one big market.

We are about 20 very different and very diverse markets.  National stats are worthless.