If they gave prison sentences for crappy headline writing, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram would no doubt have somebody on death row by sundown.
At the top right corner of today's front page a teaser headline screams, "N. Texas home sales drop 19%." The only thing missing is three exclamation points to add negative emphasis. Then, at the top of the front page of the business section they sensationalize a bit more with: "Existing homes sales plummet in September."
Then, finally, in the third paragraph, writer Andrea Ahles makes passing mention of the fact that median home prices in North Texas are up 3 percent since September. Up three percent in the face of a national market that is facing the biggest drop in home values since the Great Depression. Now there's something a so-called "hometown" newspaper might find worthy of a headline. But, no. Instead, they take the lazy way out and continue serving up tired variations on the real-estate-sky-is-falling headlines coming from the media on the left and right coasts.
Andrea, please do me two favors. First, please start focusing on the tremendous value inherent in Texas real estate - North Texas in particular. Why not highlight the fact that Texas consistently dominates the list of most affordable housing markets in the country? Nine of the 10 most undervalued U.S. metro markets are here in Texas. (There are about 300 of them in the U.S.)
Or how about the fact that a 2007 report by Primacy, one of the top employee relocation providers in the world, ranks the Fort Worth/Arlington metro area as THE BEST place in the country for relocating families. The study ranks 150 large, medium and small cities based on quality-of-life items like climate, entertainment, arts and culture, and key real estate factors including home prices, property appreciation and taxes. And (Yippee!!) when all the stats were sliced and diced, Fort Worth/Arlington came out at the very top of the heap.
My point is that there's great stuff happening in North Texas real estate, guys, so please start trying to bring some balance to your coverage and start supporting your home team (pun intended).
Oh, and Andrea, I have one more request. When you get to the office today, please stop by and slap some sense into whomever is responsible for adding those brainless headlines to your articles.
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