We have had a god-awful run of Housing data. New and Existing Home Sales, Defaults and Foreclosure data, even the Case Shiller report — all have been utterly horrific.
In light of this, I want to make the following announcement: Attention RE Agents! The National Association of Realtors are doing you a terrible disservice.
Consider the following comments from a RE Agent, published exactly three years ago (September 4, 2007) in the Realty Times:
“The National Association of Realtors and your state association will always have published reports that sound better than what you are personally experiencing in the market. Please understand that they support us. They know that whatever they say will end up in public press. We do not need any more negative press! When you read reports that we have reached the bottom or that the market has actually gone up, take it with a grain of salt. Their job is to permeate the world with good news about real estate.”
In other words, mislead the public with spin. Create false hope. Lie. This agent was defending the National Assocation of Realtor’s blatant dishonesty — a mistake on its face — just as the damage they did began to have an effect.
What the NAR was offering to buyers, sellers, their agents, indeed, anyone involved with Housing, was the blue pill.
The sort of nonsense the Realtor’s group peddles helps explain why sellers have incorrectly believed a recovery was imminent, even as housing went through a historic collapse. It is why home owners incorrectly still expect their homes to go appreciate by 10% a year.
These false beliefs have real world consequences. They create ridiculous expectations among sellers, who selectively grab onto any positive news they can. They choose the temporary blissful ignorance of illusion — that damned blue pill — versus embracing the painful truth of reality (i.e., the red pill).
This confirmation bias leads sellers into mis-pricing the value of their homes. They have been a season or even a year or more behind the pricing curve the entire way down.
Ask any listing agent how difficult it is to get sellers to become realistic in their asking prices. Real Estate agents would be moving a helluvalot more houses if they were not fighting misinformation that the NAR has put into the marketplace. Many, many agents have confirmed that, even in this crummy environment, a good house properly priced will sell.
Here’s a question for you reality (vs NAR realty) agents. Ever wonder why you seem to be having such a hard time convincing sellers to set reasonable asking prices? Ever ponder why they have such a distorted sense of the true value of their homes? Ever try to get them to set reasonable asking numbers that are competitive with current market prices?
The short answer: NAR spin.
To see how bad this false NAR narrative has become, check out this new show on HGTV: “Real Estate Intervention.” The show’s hosts travel town-to-town in an attempt to convince homeowners to sober up, put the magic mushrooms away, and price their houses realistically. They literally drag these poor bastards to nicer comparable homes to theirs — better locations, bigger square footage, nicer kitchens — all in an effort to TALK SELLERS INTO REALISTIC PRICE POINTS. It staggers the imagination: A television show actually had to be created to counter-act the excess stupidity coming from the Realtor’s trade group.
Gee, where do you think sellers got these crazy ideas? Might the NAR, by encouraging a fantasy, be actually hurting the housing market as a whole?
Even the normally staid NYT has recognized how absurd the NAR spin has become. This past weekend, Joe Nocera began an article with the sentence: “You have to wonder sometimes what they’re smoking over there at the National Association of Realtors.”
When the Gray Lady asks if your economists are high, isn’t that are warning sign that you must make a major change? How on earth is having a reputation of being stoners good for the RE business?
And, buyers have figured out that the NAR news releases are unmitigated fantasy. They have learned that any organization that has to go to such lengths to spin bad news must know that the news is much much worse. The result has been a Real Estate buyers strike.
Here it is, three years after that lame defense of NAR spin, and we can see the damage that spin has wrought. It is readily apparent that the NAR has become counter-productive to the agents they are supposed to be serving.
No, the NAR is not supporting you. They are making your jobs much, much harder. They are spinning the public, and doing you an enormous disservice.
Try RealityTM! Its what is working these days.
>
~~~
Post Script I write this not only as an analyst that has covered housing for years (and as an owner of real estate), but as the son of a RE Agent. This sort of crap was dinner table conversation for me since I was 8.
>
Previously:
Tracking NAR Spin (April 23rd, 2008)
Former NAR Economist David Lereah is a Jackass (January 6th, 2009)
Its ALWAYS a Good Time to Buy a House! (March 14th, 2010)
Source:
Twelve Step Plan to Make You Feel Better About This Market
Walter Sanford
Reality Times, September 4, 2007
http://realtytimes.com/rtpages/20070904_stepplan.htm
What's been said:
Discussions found on the web: