Posted on 10/26/2006 11:16:36 AM PDT by freemarket_kenshepherd
If NBC’s Carl Quintanilla is in a bind about what to wear to the NBC News Halloween party, he could always go as a “housing bubble.”
With only five days until Halloween, NBC “Today” show sought to spook viewers with yet another negative story on the housing market. But Quintanilla dressed up his attack on the economy with the same disguise The New York Times used a day earlier: a look at how hardware retailer Home Depot (NYSE: HD) is changing its business model to retain customers during a cooling housing market.
“There’s even more bad news for the housing market,” anchor Matt Lauer told viewers of the October 26 morning news program. “Last month, home prices fell by 2.5 percent, that’s the biggest drop ever,” he proclaimed, turning to Carl Quintanilla to look at how “now, even Home Depot is feeling the crunch.”
Quintanilla began his story with typical media bluster about the housing market’s woes, forgetting to tell viewers that both of the last two years have been all-time highs, so a decline from that number typically still reflects a huge increase.
“Seeking shelter from the economic storm. Home Depot, in the face of a massive slowdown in housing this year, is selling not just lumber, but candy, Halloween decorations, coffee, gasoline, anything to draw in customers,” the correspondent began his story.
A day earlier, New York Times reporters Michael Barbaro and Claudia H. Deutsch dressed up their story on Home Depot with the same premise.
“How does the nation’s largest home improvement retailer weather the worst housing market in a decade,” they asked in the first paragraph of their October 25 article “A Cappuccino with the 2x4’s?”
But the “worst housing market” premise is misleading and confusing for the viewers at home, who aren’t being given the full story.
According to the president of the group that calculates the existing home sales numbers, the market’s performance is fundamentally sound even as it is cooling down from earlier record highs.
“It appears we have passed a cyclical peak in terms of the number of homes on the market,” said Thomas Stevens of the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
“The good news is that fewer new listings are coming online. A stable sales pace is expected to draw down the number of listings to a supply balance that will support positive price growth within a few months,” the real estate trade group president added.
“Taking the long view is always the best way to approach housing decisions, and right now, buyers are in a very favorable market,” Stevens cautioned.
The Business & Media has previously reported on the ongoing media meme about the “housing bubble.”
Reporting on a press release by the NAR on a cooling housing market on July 25, NBC “Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams presented a 1.3 percent decline in home sales as “a housing market that’s really on the bubble.”
In July, NAR president Stevens insisted that “Relative to the five-year housing boom, this year is a buyer’s market” with “historically favorable” interest rates such that “it’s a good time to buy a home.”
Nearly three months later, NBC picked up on just how strong a buyer’s market the real estate sector is shifting into, but Williams spun the news negatively.
“‘In Depth’ tonight, what some desperate house sellers have become willing to do these days just to find a buyer,” said Williams as he introduced an October 23 story by correspondent Kerry Sanders on “some very motivated sellers in a housing market that’s decidedly on the bubble.
For the Demo-bodaggits, it's always darkest just before . . .
the first Tuesday in November.
These things are cyclical. What is worst (1 Falling prices that make housing more affordable? OR (2 Housing shortage where people can't find a house or everything is too expensive?
The lamestream mess is chunking mud on the wall to see if anything at all will stick hehehehe.
Hmmmm. Have you ever noticed that Carl Quintanilla and ex-Texan are never around at the same time? Coincidence?
Only when they're in the minority.
NBC= negitve nighty news.
They more they predict gloom and doom, the more RX commercials they can sell to the evil empire.
Desperate lies from the desperate RAT MSM.
Yep, if the House goes tits-up you'll see Nancy Lugosi transmogrify from Cassandra into Mary Sunshine: the "homeless" will all be housed, the shoeless shod, no more crime and so forth and so on. All her doom&gloom rants will go right down the old `memory hole'.
Interesting. Yes, provocative even.
Not only that, but in about 6 months they aren't even going to be posting anymore, since it will all good news on the real estate markets.
I guess they never learned that housing, like manufacturing, can be cyclical and that corrections in the markets occur and are healthy. Makes it harder to sell their doom and much harder to find someone who will buy their gold for more than they paid for it.
“It appears we have passed a cyclical peak in terms of the number of homes on the market,” said Thomas Stevens of the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
“The good news is that fewer new listings are coming online. A stable sales pace is expected to draw down the number of listings to a supply balance that will support positive price growth within a few months,” the real estate trade group president added.
“Taking the long view is always the best way to approach housing decisions, and right now, buyers are in a very favorable market,” Stevens cautioned.
So, basically, if this guy is right, NBC is misreporting on the dynamics of the housing market, in a manner that could potentially be damaging to their viewers by causing them to make bad economic decisions, simply in an attempt to influence an election.
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