An Open Challenge To MSN.Com - Can YOU Help Me?

The other day I read an article on MSN.Com's Money Section called, "Why Rent?  To Get Richer".  The article was well written, but was full of inaccuracies and errors by omission.  I called Microsoft to find out how I could write an article rebutting this article on a point by point basis and was told that they couldn't transfer me to anybody who would even know about how to go about submitting an article.

On their web site there are message boards and I again left a message offering to write an article.  I even challenged them!  No response.  Other than the message boards there is apparently no way of disputing what they write, no matter how inaccurate it is.  Being that large sites like MSN.com are what passes for journalism these days it makes me wonder if what they post even qualifies as journalism?  If it were a paper, I could at least write a letter to the editor, submit an article or picket their building.  With the net, if Microsoft says it, it must be true.

So that brings us to this point. 

*  Renting will not make you richer.

*  Equity in real estate is still, by far, the country's number one source of wealth surpassing all the other forms of wealth combined!

*  Home owners on average have net worths that are multiples of the net worth of renters. 

*  The vast majority of people who bought a home, maintained it, made the payments and held the home for periods of at least 7 years have made money on the sale of the home.  This fact goes back over two hundred years!  Even if you add up all of the payments, the taxes, the insurance, the cost of the upkeep this fact remains true. 

*  If you subtract out the amount that you would have paid in rent from this total, you are back to it being a vast majority of people end up making money for having owned the home!  You would also have to factor in the fact that rents go up over time.

If I'm right and the guy who wrote that article is wrong, shouldn't I be able to make my case in the court of public opinion?  Does MSN.com not have some responsibility to at least entertain the idea my rebutting this irresponsible article? 

They say that there are six degrees of separation  between any one person and any other person in the world.  If this is the case, who do you know that I can email my rebuttal to?  If it's not up to their "journalistic" standards, then cool.  They can feel free to pass it along to somebody who is a better writer than I am and who can follow up on my lead. 

I'm not in this for the glory.  I simply feel that it was a travesty to lead people to believe that they are better off renting than they are in owning their home.  They have the power of the bully pulpit, let's see if they are afraid to share it?

R.B. "Bob" Mitchell

ValueList Real Estate Services, Inc.