Great post.  I am always trying to show my clients here in Austin how the media is spinning the truth to drive up their business and ruin someone else's.  I think they should be sued for slander.

J.

Thank you very much. The media definitely has the power to influence people enough to make them believe it's not worth buying a house at the moment because the market is so "bad." It's irresponsible to give people the wrong picture of what is really happening. I hope we can change that. :)

I believe this media is holding sellers back from listing in my area.  Hard to combat the negative.

I appreciate you reading my post and taking the time to share your experience with this frustrating habit that media sources seem to have. It always seems to be more popular to focus on noisy trouble than on quiet goodness. When people hear about sky-high oil prices, a potential recession and all sorts of other speculative talk, it makes sense that they don't know quite what to think of it all. We'll just have to keep trying sending positive messages to turn this around.

Robert-

I am glad to see you jumping on the positivity train.

For change to occur, we must move beyond facts and figures and into benefits that are emotional dirvers. Reasons to buy now.

People simply do not buy because of facts. We use facts or logic to justify what we just did emotionally. SO we can argue facts all day, but it is like arguing the bible or religion. You will get nowhere as your listener has just as many facts as you.

So in order to move markets we again as an industry must get back to selling. Which is always based on emotional reasons as described here:

http://www.houseblogger.com/houseblogger/real_estate_bubble/

Dear Tim,

Wow. Thank you very much for putting in words what I have been feeling but haven't been able to say out loud. I knew there was a flaw in my way of thinking, and I'm grateful that you pointed it out. I definitely agree that there are plenty of people who are more knowledgeable than I am about the current real-estate market (By the way, I think I just violated one of the laws of blogging successfully by admitting that I am not a flawless expert on what I'm writing about. Oh well. I'm more interested in learning than in being right!).

I think it will take me some time to process this new information and develop some new ideas to share, but I'm grateful to you for challenging me. You're great! I'll definitely visit that Web site you mentioned and start getting some better ideas from it.

Thanks I am glad you liked my post but just so you know  that site is my site so there is no confusion.

There has been so much doom and gloom for over a year and half, I'm glad to see something positive.  I had to search hard to find this site.  I think if the media were to show the positive things happening in the Real Estate market, those buyers sitting on the fence would get off and start buying and we'd see the end of the tunnel.

Unforntunantly for me, I'm in one of those states which is greatly affected.  Arizona.  I'm sitting on a property which has lost over $100,000 of value in 2 years.  I don't know why they say the market has lost 3-8%, In my book it's lost about 30% and I can't even sell the house for the loss.  I will most likely have to let it go soon and ruin my spotless credit!

 - Mike

Dear Mike,

I'm glad that you were able to find this site despite the effort. I think you're absolutely right about the media's influence on people's buying habits. When all that we hear is negative news, of course we'll be worried about the real-estate market. It's always more newsworthy to write about things falling apart than things that remain stable.

I hope that you will be able to make it through this challenge. Thank you for taking the time to share your experience.