INVENTORY OF UNSOLD DWELLINGS SOARS IN N. UTAH,  DEMAND FOR NEW HOMES IN THE BASEMENT, U.S. HOME FORECLOSURES SKYROCKET… The headlines go on and on.  Whoa! Wait a minute.  At times like these I am reminded of Non-Prophet’s song Mainstream 307 saying “Then one day it all dawned on me, I wasn’t down with the mainstream”.  Many times the mainstream media ends up being lots of hoopla without any real substance because they have too many newspapers and airwaves to fill and not enough real news. 

The newspaper and the news televisions programs must come up with stories everyday.  And recently I have noticed a common formula they use to get their stories.  They take a recent release of market data and then they make a story out of it.  Sometimes they can even spin a little market data into a front page story like the Salt Lake Tribune did with the number of new home construction permits taken out in their article title “Demand for new homes in the basement” on October 17, 2007.  Today their article was “Inventory of unsold dwellings soars in N. Utah, study shows”; a talk on how the number of vacant new homes is similar to how it was in the 80’s and 90’s.  Well today I am going to write my own article: 

Number of homes sold in October up 30 units from 10 years ago.

893 units sold in sold in Salt Lake County for October 2007.  That is 30 more than the 863 sold ten years ago for October 1997 in Salt Lake County.  Mark Alder, a local realtor, says “more homes sold in October 2007 than October 1997 ”  Despite pressures from newspapers and television and tighter lending standards, homes continue to sell.  This really shows how resilient our housing market is.

(actual data taken from the WFRMLS on Nov 2, 2007)

My point is not to argue about the condition of  the Salt Lake real estate market.  My point is that the mainstream media is making a mountain out of a mole hill because of their need to fill all their pages and airwaves to appease advertisers and CEOs.  Next time you read an article in  the newspaper, take a look and see whether there really is substance to the story or they are just taking one slice of market data and writing a whole article out of it.

One segment of market data is not going to give a complete picture of the Salt Lake real estate market.  For example, new vacant homes, and their numbers are only one indicator.  They are not going to tell you about the downtown condo market under $200,000.  But if you have just a few negative headlines, then you might assume that the downtown condo market is in the same shape.

It is easy to believe that the world might indeed be ending next week.  We are lucky that is easy to get our information from multiple sources these days. Stay smart and access blogs and information besides the mainstream.  Just be careful, because one day this blog might be so popular that it becomes mainstream and then one day it might dawn on you…