Why Buy Now? Media Is Wrong About Housing Slump, says Blanche Evans, senior editor of Realty Times.
Yet, she can’t figure out why the real estate business shouldn’t be trusted?
Why buy a house now? You’ve been getting bad information. Here’s why, she says.
"The financial press is worried that they might have gone too far — paralyzing the nation into recession by piling on housing. So they’re finally beginning to question the indexes where they get their data, and whether the news is really as bad as it seems. Slowly but surely, headlines are changing from Don’t Buy A Home Now to Is It Time To Buy? Stop listening to the media. Go buy a home."
Blanche, Blanch, Blanche… Blaming the media and pretending the housing crash is non-existent is so 2007. Join the ranks of David Lereah. Come clean.
Truth is the housing slump isn’t over. It’ll get worse. If Blanche was so confident, she’d be out buying homes herself.
Housing Outlook is Bleak
When the nation’s biggest buyer of home mortgages racks up $2 billion in quarterly losses and forecasts a steeper drop for home prices, it’s not a time to buy anything. Fannie Mae lost $2.57 a share ($2.2 billion) in Q1 2008, as compared to a year earlier profit of 85 cents a share ($961 million). And if it takes on too much financial risk, as foreclosures continue to mount, the global financial system will be rocked.
Even David Lereah has put down his housing pom-poms.
Last time we heard former NAR chief economist, David Lereah, he was leaving his post, discredited by years of pumping a dying housing market, and daily blog attacks.
But has the cheerleader that declared a market bottom in September 2006 changed his tune? Yep.
"We’re not at the bottom. [People] want it to be near the bottom, but we’re not there yet. The leading indicators are still very bad. Pending home sales are still in bad shape. Mortgage applications are low … There’s still supply out there in abundance … This thing is going to get worse before it gets better."
The housing boom he says, "go so out of hand, and none of us realized the magnitude of it until it was too late."
If only we could convince Lawrence Yun and Blanche Evans.
