Watching News Reports Between The Lines

If you are a Washington Area consumer trying to make sense of news reports about the local real estate market, you really have to listen carefully and read between the lines.

If, for example, you are listening to a nightly news report on a national network or cable news program, you will be getting information about the country as a whole. Even the local news shows are giving information about the far flung Washington Metro area, and the numbers may have little or no bearing to the market in your own neighborhood.

Remember that old saying that all real estate is local? Today at the Evers & Company weekly office meeting, Lisa Fowler, who is the Director of the Office of Housing Policy Research at George Mason University, gave a wonderful presentation on the fine points of the Washington, DC area market for residential real estate.

Have you read recently that sales for 2007 were down by 47 percent from their high in 2004? Well, yes, in numbers of properties sold across the whole area, that’s an accurate statement. But at the same time, the average sales price has climbed from $373,000 in 2004 to $470,000 last year, or an increase of about 26 percent.

But wait! That doesn’t mean if you have a house in Manassas that you bought in 2005 for $373,000 that you could more than you paid for it if you had to sell today. And if you are selling in the District, you might be able to get more than the average – unless you are trying to sell a condo in Penn Quarter, where there is a bit of an oversupply of product.

Then, there are foreclosure issues that have been a huge problem in many parts of the country. Here in the Washington Metro area, there are 88 foreclosures for each 10,000 homes. This is a terrible thing for the people affected, but not nearly as bad as some other areas, like the Miami area with 283 and Detroit’s 275 per 10,000.

But once again, when you dig further into what’s happening in the DC area, there are huge differences among the various local jurisdictions, with rates per 10,000 ranging from 24 in DC to 288 in Prince William County, making it worse than parts of the Miami Metro area, thought of as the foreclosure capital of the country.

News programming in this country is aimed at the lowest common denominator, and to an audience thought to have a very short attention span. And even if they play it for smart people, it’s hard to for a TV or radio reporter, even on my beloved NPR, to do a story that will give you the specific information you need to make a decision about whether or not this is a good time to make a move.

OK, now I’m going to turn on my TV set to watch the Super Tuesday returns. I’m sure the media will do a terrific job of what’s going on with the Presidential races around the country!