Facts and Fiction

Although the media has tended to focus on the downside of the changing real estate market, there are also compelling messages about local real estate that need to be heard by consumers. These include low interest rates, stabilized prices in Northeast Florida and an increasing number of available properties, making today the perfect time to purchase a home. While negative headlines by their nature capture most of the attention, savvy buyers should be motivated by FACTS.

Negative press surrounding the real estate industry is not a new phenomenon. Fortune magazine ran a cover in October, 2002 that depicted a house on the edge of a cliff, accompanied by the headline, “Are Real Estate Prices About to Fall?”. Looking back four years later, if someone didn't buy a house in 2002, they missed out on four years of historic home price appreciation. The unfortunate reality is that bad news sells, and housing is an easy target right now.

Astute consumers will take an historical perspective into the current marketplace. Analyze the periods of time in the late ’70s and early ’80s; and then from 1990 to 1993 when there was a drop in housing. Then, consider what precipitated both declines. The primary contributing factors were: a) High unemployment; and b) High interest rates (Up to 15 percent in the ’80s, and over 10 percent in the early ’90s”).

Today, conversely, there is an abundance of good news, including a dramatically growing population and strong job growth in Northeast Florida; and historically low interest rates near 6.5 percent. Homes are still an incredible investment and incentives are plentiful.

To highlight what we feel are classic examples of the media’s bias towards negative news and their tendency to sensationalize, we have analyzed several new articles than recently ran in The Florida Times-Union. These stories all featured either misleading headlines; misrepresentation of the facts; or both. All in order to paint a bleak picture of the local real estate market, when in fact we have one of the strongest markets in the nation. In the interest of fairness, we also selected some articles published by the newspaper that accentuate the positives.