Finally A Decent Piece of Journalism

Most of you who subscribe to our local newspaper have probably had it with negative real estate reporting in the news. I know I have- so Kenneth Hearney's article in last Sunday's paper was a welcome moderate voice, even if we did have to rely on the AP for some good reporting. The article concludes by stating that a lot of the recent news media rhetoric has been superfluous and severe. Hearney's conclusion is that this faulty rhetoric, while terribly effective at selling papers, really cripples the market in the long term. I share this sentiment with him.

People always ask me where I see the market going... so here goes.

The U.S. economy is in an interesting position- the Dow is hitting record highs, unemployment is low, oil prices are down, and the long term interest rates have slowly been falling each week. Also the luxury housing market is very strong. All of these externals lead me to believe that serious buyers and sellers don't need to sweat the larger forces of the economy. Although we are in a correcting market I think we are seeing greedy and frivolous investors get what was coming to them. These are the true horror stories- otherwise I think things are getting back to normal. Normal means that the drastic 30-40% run up in prices is easing back to the normal patterns of what prices would have increased to incrementally without the boom. The day to day vicissitudes of being a real estate practicioner model to me more of a correction than a bust.