I just love how our local media works in Minneapolis/St. Paul.
Yesterday, the front page of the local papers had highlighted headlines like " House Sales drop 8%" and "Bad news for Housing Market". Both paper's business sections had the AP story about how sales in March were down 8%, etc....... with the only comment from "David Lereah, chief economist at the Realtors". Huh???
Anyone talk to a local Realtor? The Minnesota Assn. of Realtors President? A Mortgage Broker?
While local sales are rather flat, everyone I talk to talks about how activity is going up, how people are more realistically pricing their homes, how mortgage applications are even with last year....in SPITE of bad-apple subprime lenders going away.
Of course, that wouldn't sell papers.
I wish they would have included that according to the US Labor Department, unemployment in Minnesota has dropped each of the last 4 months to it's current 4.2% level. We all know how unemployment rates can be tied into home purchases. I also wish they would have better mentioned that this 8% drop was a national average.....or at least mentioned it as quickly as they used to point out (correctly, I might add) that when home appreciation amounts were going up by 10-15% nationally year-by-year, that number included quickly appreciating markets like Las Vegas, Florida, and California.
Of course, that wouldn't sell papers.
It reminds me of an admonishment I heard from Jeffrey Gitnomer (The Little Red Book of Selling author), who asked why any of us in sales had any reason to watch or read the news. He mentioned that that 1/2 hour of watching or reading each day was nothing but negative......and that would end up dragging you down, as well as wasting our time.
When I read articles like this, it just keeps proving that he is right!
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