Real Estate – Time Magazine Just Can’t Help Themselves

Althought I’m no fan of Time magazine, I did get a laugh at their recent article about whether the real estate market (nationally) has hit bottom or not.

Despite the fact that the title of the article is “Has the Housing Market Finally Hit Bottom?” which might lead you to believe that they are looking at this being a possibility, they practically work themselves into a pretzel to make the case that there really shouldn’t be any optimism.

The articles starts out in a way that makes it appear that we have hit the bottom but they just can’t help themselves and make sure that they gives you a better idea of their take on this.

No wonder, then, that the media and economy watchers have been so concerned with tumbling home values. Many have been eager for house prices nationally to reach a point at which they stabilize and start to creep back up. The information superhighway is littered with the corpses of pundits who have erroneously called the “bottom” of the real estate market, but hope springs eternal. This week produced two reports which have analysts optimistic that we’ve reached that point….More at Has the Housing Market Finally Hit Bottom?

The problem is that what they are saying is not completely untrue.  However, putting their slant on news makes this more of an editorial than a news story.

They present information about the two reports they mention and then continue to work their ‘angle’ on the story.

So do these data describe a housing market that’s hit bottom? Possibly, but we’ve heard this song before. Despite these optimistic reports, there’s still plenty of reasons to be dubious….More at Has the Housing Market Finally Hit Bottom?

Again, I’m not in disagreement with them that the positive statistics and reports about the real estate market definitely show an improvement but that it doesn’t mean that the national real estate market has hit the bottom.  Real estate markets are local and though there can be national real estate market trends you still have to look at a specific local market and what condition it is in to know how that market is doing.

Right now there are local markets that have already hit bottom and are rising, some are at the point or near the point of hitting bottom and others are still declining.

I do understand some of the point of this article but like I said at the beginning I had to laugh when I read it for its optimistic-sounding title and pessimstic content.  Take a look at the end of the article to get an even better feel for this.

Sobering stuff, but even if you think that Ritholtz’s analysis is too pessimistic, remember everyone who has called a housing bottom to this point has been wrong. And even if housing prices have stabilized, it doesn’t mean that they have to start rising again any time soon. It may be that we have to wait for employment to drag us out of the housing mess rather than the other way around….More at Has the Housing Market Finally Hit Bottom?