Apr 26 2007 1:34PM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (0) |
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One of the most frustrating things about covering the housing market is seeing how information gets mangled by the consumer media. The latest mistake appeared in Wednesday's New York Times article on March's existing home sales numbers.

With the headline "Home sales plunge to 1989 levels," (since corrected online) the editors totally missed what had happened. In reality, the 8.4 percent drop in sales from February to March was the largest since 1989. While that's bad enough in its own right, it's nowhere near the calamity reported in the headline, which would have had most of us out polishing our resumes. In reality, the annualized rate of 6.12 million homes sold was still twice as many as were sold in 1989.

While this was an out-and-out mistake, most of the time the problems are more subtle. Most editors and reporters lack the understanding or the time to properly interpret information about the market, or put it in its proper historical context. I used to cover homes for a daily newspaper and I was woefully uninformed compared to what I know about the market now.

As a former newspaper reporter, I try to have empathy for reporters that are expected to be experts about a wide variety of topics, but it shows why we need to take what we see in the consumer media, especially when it comes to housing and economics, with a grain of salt.