While seemingly on the bubble trail, she always manages to slip up. Come on Catherine, you can do it - actually get through an article without using an unsourced or made-up statement of fact. She can be contacted here for those who share my beef.
Try to write a whole piece without including unchecked quotes from the biased Real Estate Industrial Complex membership, Catherine. And actually write a piece that doesn't look like the Republic's advertising department (dominated by homebuilders) approved it first.
Here's the latest slop, with my commentary where needed.
Worried about declining home values in the Valley?
If you live in central Phoenix, north Scottsdale and patches of the East or West Valley, you don't need to fret (CATHERINE - IS THIS YOUR OPINION? DO YOU OWN A HOUSE IN PHOENIX THAT YOU'D LIKE TO DISCLOSE? AND IS THIS AN ENDORSEMENT TO BUY FROM REPUBLIC ADVERTISERS IN THOSE AREAS?)
Average home prices in those areas are still climbing - and climbing rapidly, in some cases. (PRESENT TENSE CLIMBING RAPIDLY? OH, MAN, THAT'S A HOOT. YOUR DATA IS DECEIVING - COMPARING OCT/NOV/DEC TO JAN/FEB/MAR. GO LOOK AT THE MONTHLIES AND CORRECT YOUR STORY. WE'RE IN JULY NOW HONEY, A WHOLE DIFFERENT WORLD)
In other pockets around metropolitan Phoenix, the average price of an existing home dropped 6, 7, even 12 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005 to the first quarter of this year. (AND WE AIN'T SEEN NOTHIN YET)
An analysis of sales by ZIP code shows most areas saw average home values climb, if only by a little bit, during the first part of this year. About a third of all metropolitan Phoenix neighborhoods experienced drops in price, according to figures from the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service. (5,000 LISTINGS A YEAR AGO IN PHOENIX - AND 50,000+ NOW. 2005 WAS A WHOLE DIFFERENT WORLD, PRE-HOUSING-PANIC, IN PHOENIX)
The Valley's overall median home price has remained flat this year at about $265,000. Resales, meanwhile, are down 34 percent for the year. (HMMM... INVENTORY EXPLODING.... SALES DRYING UP... YUP, NO NEED TO FRET!)
"The Valley's housing market is going to be dicey for a while, and it's best to track it by neighborhood," said Terry Turk, president of Sun American Mortgage of Mesa. "I don't think we are at the bottom of the market, but it shouldn't be a dramatic drop from here." (WHY OH GOD WHY MUST WE RUSH OUT TO A FRICKING MORTGAGE COMPANY CATHERINE? DON'T YOU REALIZE THEY TOOK YOUR CALL JUST AS THEY WERE FIGURING OUT HOW MANY PEOPLE TO LAY OFF IN THE OFFICE? DON'T YOU THINK THEY'RE A BIT BIASED?)
(HERE COMES ANOTHER INSANELY BIASED UNCHECKED QUOTE, FROM THE LARGEST REALTOR AND REPUBLIC ADVERTISER IN TOWN): Realty Executives President John Foltz said home prices in established Valley neighborhoods should be stable, but newer areas on the perimeter, such as Queen Creek and the far West Valley, are likely to struggle as new homes continue to go up.
July 01, 2006
HP calls out the Arizona Republic's Catherine Reagor for continued lazy housing bubble reporting. Protecting those advertisers of yours?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
keep the heat on until they fire her or put her in for retraining. must have gone to asu's journalism school. ha!
Yeah, Catherine's article made it to the front page of the Republic on Friday. It was pretty ridiculous; one of these hand-holding, everything will be alright puff pieces. Shea Homes had a very expensive-looking (2 full-size color pages) ad in the same section of the newspaper.
1933? Don't you know that Phoenix weathered the great depression better than most cities, especially those cities on th east coast? In fact they had a hard time finding workers. There was some benefit to those high temps in the summer and few buildings with A/C.
Back to the point, I agree, Phoenix will have some major readjustments to make if their economy and desirability as a place to live are to remain in the top ten. But then I believe as Phoenix goes so goes the nation. The problem isn't the rise in home prices (again as most don't agree, the cost per sq foot adjusted for inflation has remained fairly constant except in those bubble neighborhoods and a few expensive cities) but the government's goal of reducing the USA to third world status.
Look at Congress, another pay raise but voting down the minimum wage increase. Hello? The increase in their salary over the last nine years would provide a job for three minimum wage families per congressman. The corruption of both political parties is leading to the end of the American middle class. At least in Europe (and costs for everything is high) the government's protect the worker and pay a liveable wage and protects their economies from "unfair globalization" seeking to destroy the security of the working class.
Until the government penalizes big corporations from exporting jobs, not sharing the profits with their workers, taxing excessive compensation to CEOs the problem will lead to the end of America.
I checked the zip codes that were provided with the article, the ones that had more than 50 sales in 1Q05 and 1Q06. If you look at those, you will find that about 45% of the zip codes provided are down in average sales price. She said "one third" were down in the article -- she is apparently using all zip codes there, but where the most frequent sales are, the percentage is much higher.
I would also have preferred that she used median sales price instead of the average, and I would also be interested to see how many are down from 4Q05.
She is a horrible reporter. Why is there no mention of the huge inventory of homes for sale? Also no mention of the climbing DOM stat, and the fact that many homes are resetting their DOM to look better. There is also a condo at the Regency House that has had several price drops, starting at 949K and then 899K then 829K and now at 769K. 180K price drop ! What are these people smoking?
Look at the bigger picture. $769K for a poorly built sh*tbox in a market with declining job prospects and high energy costs to cool / water.
That is the basic issue. Why is that house worth that much? You could buy a very nice farm in Tenn with a nice house and stock it with lots of cattle and still pay less than that.
What became of value pricing? Which would you rather have?
A fantastic blog yours. Keep it up.
If you have a moment, please visit my aviation recruitment site.
I send you warm regards and wish you continued success.
Hello I am the traffic man, zip, zip, zip. Make a new resolution to get a flood of traffic to your website this year. Let me show you how to get FREE traffic to your site. Yes I said FREE, FREE, FREE!!! Don't delay.
To find out more, visit my internet wealth site. It successfully covers FREE information exposing FREE traffic and internet wealth related stuff. Don't forget - FREE, FREE, FREE. You have nothing to lose!
Searching for Travel Guide?
We have collected together in one convenient place a wide assortment of arizona Travel Guide information.
Post a Comment