Indianapolis New Homes
Shame on you Indianapolis Star for running your lead story in today’s paper without all the facts. For those that didn’t see it, the Indy Star’s lead story today is “Area Home Sales Tumble 24%” in giant font with a subtitle of “October drop in one of largest of crisis, far exceeds nationwide decline of 3.3%”.
What really rubs me the wrong way is how they and other media outlets just love to glom on to this negative news. I am not refuting the numbers they published, they are correct. What I don’t like is how they just glossed over the impact the elimination of down payment assistance played on this.
What they failed to mention is that September sales were up pretty much across the board most likely due to buyers trying to take advantage of the now banned practice of having the seller pay for the buyer’s down payment. Here is a look at the same county by county breakdown of sales activity that the Star reported buy these numbers are for September:
| 2007 | 2008 | % Change | |
| Boone | 66 | 79 | + 20% |
| Hamilton | 401 | 419 | + 4% |
| Hancock | 81 | 72 | - 11% |
| Hendricks | 151 | 188 | + 25% |
| Johnson | 146 | 155 | + 6% |
| Marion | 1009 | 1045 | + 4% |
The elimination of the DPA probably caused this spike in September and thus the drop off in October. I might have missed it, but I don’t recall the Star running a front page story about how despite the current housing crisis sales are up in September.
Don’t get me wrong, I am saying the real estate market is fine and dandy. It does stink. I just think with such an important topic and such a crucial time, the Indy Star owes its readership the full story which in this case requires some additional perspective. They clearly went for the attention grabbing headline to sell a few more papers at the peril of deepening an already waning consumer confidence in the real estate market. Shame on you Indianapolis Star.
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Date: Tuesday, November, 25th 2008 @ 09:04:08 AMViews: 2003
This blog entry currently has 8 comments posted.
Mario Rossi
Ciao and greetings from Italy, I am Mario a Realtor from Rome, grazie for posting such interesting information, for me is appropriate as now the Real Estate house prices is the same similar situation in Europe and indeed very relevent to the Real Estate at this moment Market here in Italy.
Posted on 2008-12-27 16:56:37
james wheelock
I believe it was a majorily bad move by the government to eliminate DPA. At this point in time that was a shinning diamond amongst all of the coal. Then add to that the media's constant bombardment of negative news and people that are looking to make a purchase to be a home second guess themselves.
Posted on 2008-12-27 18:18:44
Betty Saenz
News agencies are so caught up in sensationalism. I wish we could simply get the facts in the old dry but ever so popular Walter Croncite style. You have to filter what you hear with the facts. It's a shame.
Posted on 2009-01-08 14:22:29
Michael
Reinstating down payment assistance (DPA) will help stimulate our desolate housing market; from my vantage point, we need DPA now more than ever. I encourage everyone to support this new bill.So many people out there thought they were priced out of the housing market so there was no need to work towards saving for a downpayment on a home. Now housing prices are down and interest rates are low. The perfect time to buy and I for one will be supporting this bill to help those families achieve the American Dream.
Regards,
Michael McLaughlin, Cary real estate
Posted on 2009-02-27 21:02:47
doug abrams
Mike. You are no better than the star. Your headline is "Star Exagerates Housing Crisis", then go on to say you are "not refuting the numbers they published, they are correct." which is it; did the star exagerate or was the information correct?
Reality is that you are like every other realtor, you dont like bad news cause its bad for business. You promote headlines like "Star Exagerates Housing Crisis", to help your business. What is the difference between you and the Star?
The further truth is that much of our problems in Indianapolis are caused by unprofessional realtors. The did away with down payment assistance, becuase it was neither. For instance, a home is selling for $100,000. Buyer needs down payment assistance. Suddenly, the price of the home is jacked up to $104 k to accommodate "the assistance". the result is that the buyers are overpaying and the lender is at 104% of ltv, not the 100% ltv as originally planed.
The best thing you and other realtors today can do is to professionallize your license. How can we take you seriously when a convicted felon can be licensed. i could go on and on.
Posted on 2009-04-09 14:30:55
Mike Taylor
Doug, I appreciate your comments and agree with much of what you say with but must disagree with you on the idea that the post is just as inflammatory as the Star’s article. The point I was trying to make in this blog post is that the Indy Star took one month’s of sales data and made a major headline out of it which was somewhat misleading. I was simply trying to point out that while the data the Indy Star did use was accurate, it certainly did not represent a true picture of the housing market.
As far as the professionalism in real estate, I could not agree with you more. The barrier to entry in this profession is laughable and embarrassing.
Posted on 2009-04-11 05:56:34
Kim
I agree with the idea behind posting this blog. The media tends to generate a stir usually based on fear...Even though the economy is in a downturn, there are still plenty of us out there who are doing ok; however, the negative view the media puts out isn't helping the economy..it's almost as if keeping us in a state of fear is proving to be profitable for someone...I wonder...
Posted on 2009-06-29 14:08:03
Jodi Suguitan
I'm with you, it's almost impossible to get an accurate perspective from most media these days. Dramatic headlines with a nugget of truth seems to be the trend. Most recently the reporting of job losses comes to mind. 500,000 plus jobs being lost was being reported across most networks. The number was touted as being the single worst number in decades. What irritated me was that not a single news source I saw put the number in perspective. Sure its a huge number but they should really be looking at what that represents as a percentage of the total job market. The workforce has grown dramatically over the last several decades so in reality the percentage loss may not be that bad. I would hope that not everyone takes reported statistics at face value.
Posted on 2008-12-07 16:54:50