How Many Real Estate Analysts Does It Take To Screw In A Lightbulb?

How Many Real Estate Analysts Does It Take To Screw In A Lightbulb? Well, we don't really know as the analysts are often invisible.

The real estate news industry has been suffering from poor journalistic skills and the perceived shortcut of exaggerating data that is available. 

There actually is some important news to report, but instead, like Chicken Little, the real estate news industry scans the internet to find someone to predict housing prices are going to fall.

So, what news should be reported?

Mortgage rates dropped last week by over one-quarter of a percent, from 6.62% to 6.34%. 

That's a total drop of almost 1% in the past month!

Another big piece of news is that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae raised the maximum loans they will purchase to $726,200 in most areas and $1,089,300, which is a 12% increase from last year.

The third piece of news is that home sellers are NOT cutting prices in a desperate move to sell their homes, typical in a housing crash, but instead are removing their homes from the market in record numbers. Redfin reports that over 2% of the listings were taken off the market recently, showing that sellers are being very patient.

So, three big pieces of news, all indicate that the market is pretty healthy.
So, what is the industry reporting? Of course, they are "predicting" housing prices to fall. But are they? Well, actually, they cite analysts, and I use the word "cite" as really they don't quote them, or even identify them.

Example: US News quotes a Reuters Poll that says analysts predict prices to fall 12% OK, again, US News reports a Reuters Poll of analysts. OK, which analysts are predicting a 12% drop? It does not really say. The article's dateline, interestingly enough, is Bengaluru, India. Hmmm. While the headline cites "analysts polled by Reuters", it actually only lists two, but it also cites another article by Case-Schiller that was a poll of 25 "housing strategists." This article, it quotes Crystal Sunbury saying "The expensive prices of homes coupled with high mortgage rates have made housing unaffordable for many Americans." While true, that is a statement of fact, not a prediction of housing prices dropping.

The only other analyst quoted is Matthew Gardner of Windermere Real Estate, a regional company in the Northwest US, and he says "Home prices in 2023 will be somewhat protected by inventory constraints." Again, not exactly predicting housing price drops.

So, 2 analysts and a poll of "housing strategists, but none actually predict a housing price drop. 

MarketWatch, one of the worst offenders of fake news reports of housing market crashes over the past year, apparently has given up and has decided just to report nonsense. Wow, Bill, that's strong, how can you say that?

So what did we learn from these 7 predictions from MarketWatch? If you learned something, besides MarketWatch being terribly confusing, please let me know.
--
Bill Gross, The LAProbate Expert
I am a real estate broker in Los Angeles, CA focused on probate real estate and the leader of a team of over 1,100 agents and national probate experts.

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