Here’s a lesson in inconsistency from the Dallas Morning News. Within a 24 hour period the Newspaper seems to have taken the stance that the local real estate market is doing both very poorly, and very well.
The titles to the two articles?:
- Dallas Area Ranks High in Home Price Performance Report.
- Harvard Study finds Dallas-Fort Worth home Prices at 1990’s levels.
I mean, if it were two different publications I could potentially understand. But the same newspaper? Wait, it gets better. Both articles were written BY THE SAME AUTHOR!!!
The author, Steve Brown, even goes against a quote he uses from a housing economist. The economist is quoted as saying “no adjustment in prices has been necessary”, which Brown follows up with his own commentary in saying “actually, home prices are down more than 15%”
In a third article on the matter, Falling Home Prices Have Reset Dallas Fort Worth Values to 1990’s Levels, Brown indicates an 18% drop in values.
In one article he attributes our value falters to the fact that DFW didn’t have large price gains in recent years. And in another article, 24 hours later, he uses the same lack in price gains logic as a reasoning for our price stability. I give you direct quotes from the articles:
It is such a convoluted mess I am starting to confuse myself. It is, of course, evident that Mr. Brown was confused all along (or at least without serious personal conviction one way or another). Perhaps we could just hire out persuasive essay’s from local middle schools and replace career journalists altogether. I know that when I wrote persuasive essays in school I never bothered to be truly convinced of one side or another, I just needed enough content with ample support and I considered my project complete. I could manipulate the data in ways that upheld my argument, and I typically did well in writing.
Something tells me that is what we are getting from the Dallas Morning News also.
For the time being, I will trust the economists perspective, and not the journalistic commentary which is contradictory to its own recent publishings.
June 24th, 2009 at
Hahaha, clever analysis. And yet they wonder why print journalism is in trouble.
June 24th, 2009 at
Gracias, although I must say that if Steve were to argue the point that prices should do well point forward… I would accept that.
June 25th, 2009 at
[...] another blog-jab at journalism, Austin at Fort Worth Real Estate takes the Dallas Morning News to task for conflicting stories on whether DFW real estate prices are l…… and in the end, he asked “why don’t we just hire out the job of journalist to a [...]
June 25th, 2009 at
I think I’ve written to you before suggestion that our property taxes are so high, they devalue the property, because you have to pay a mil rate of about 1.5% every year. Unless inflation is very rapid, that’s going to mean the property isn’t worth as much … I’m sure there’s more to it. Another thing is wages are flat in this country, to my estimate, over the last 15 years. If people don’t earn, they can’t mortgage.
Just my two cents.
June 28th, 2009 at
You may have a point, although I expect inflation to soon be so high that that won’t be an issue. Still, you must remember that we have no state income tax, just another reason to buy well below your means.