We're all tired of reading doom and gloom everywhere we look - and potential buyers are being frightened into inaction and pessimism. Less people are making offers and offers are often way below sensible.
This morning's business headlines in the St. Petersburg Times (and in a weekend edition, no less) read "Home prices show big drop".
Wrong impression, if not exactly the wrong statistics.
The tables in the Times compared the average price change in the last year in Hillsborough County and the median price change in the last year in Pinellas County. The writer alleges that Hillsborough County only keeps track of the average. If that's correct, why not compare the average price in Pinellas County, since the Pinellas Realtor Organization keeps track of both the average and the median prices.
Could it be because the newspaper would prefer to be pessimistic and show the mean price declining 14% instead of showing that the average price change from Nov 2006 to Nov 2007 was an increase of 4.6% for single family homes and an increase of 6% for condos?
Don't know if it will be published, but I sent a Letter to the Editor today asking that question.
(link was corrected from original post)
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