CBS News Tries to Talk You Out of the American Dream, Why?

CBS News is the latest real estate industry news titan to mislead readers and buyers into its agenda, why?

Before we get into that, let's, as always, start with the data.

Mortgage rates continue their steady 6-7% bandwidth, closing this week slightly down again at 6.5%, about the same as they have trended most of this year.

Inventory: nationally, housing stock continues at record lows for periods other than during the pandemic and has declined to match the rates of 2021. As I have repeatedly said, as long as inventory is low, prices cannot go down much.

I love that graph from Terradatum as it shows the numbers in relation to the last 5 years. Here is a misleading graph from the California Association of Realtors that only shows the last 3 years, of which 2 were during a global pandemic, and may not be an accurate reflection of the market.

Locally, in Los Angeles, the market grew slightly in the direction of a seller's market to a market action index of 44, higher than the last few months' rating of 41-42.

You probably heard about the Biden administration's plan to raise mortgage fees on well-qualified borrowers to pay for less qualified borrowers. The question I have asked is how does this make sense as a policy? Well, Money Magazine tries to explain it.

While they properly point out how it raises the costs to well-qualified borrowers by about $2,800, they do not explain how this improves affordability overall. Again, if the problem is that there are not enough homes, then taxing some and paying others only shuffles the cards on who gets a house and who does not, but does not make it affordable to more people, unless the goal is to have people who can afford homes just lose out in bidding wars.

The award this week for most misleading news, goes to CBS News and contributor Nancy Chen, with their article "Should you rent or buy? High home prices, mortgage rates challenge the American dream of homeownership."

I have to be a little easy on Nancy as she is a fellow Trojan,

and she does not seem to have ANY expertise in real estate based on her most recent work as none of her 32 other most recent articles even discuss real estate.

I think what is frustrating is to see the news platforms like CBS, which have so much impact, really do next to nothing to educate its audience. The article and video are full of confusing facts and leave the viewer unclear about what to do. One of the most misleading comments it makes is, "It may be cheaper to rent instead of buy." Of course, its always cheaper to rent than buy, similar to leasing a car or buying a car, The article makes good points about the importance of planning ahead, budgeting, and making sure you have enough saved to buy a home, but to indicate that renting can be an alternative to buying as an option to build long term wealth is financial malpractice.

I have to be a little easy on Nancy as she is a fellow Trojan,

and she does not seem to have ANY expertise in real estate based on her most recent work as none of her 32 other most recent articles even discuss real estate.

I think what is frustrating is to see the news platforms like CBS, which have so much impact, really do next to nothing to educate its audience. The article and video is full of confusing facts, and leaves the viewer unclear what to do. One of the most misleading comments it makes is "...it may be cheaper to rent instead of buy." Of course, its always cheaper to rent than buyer, similar to leasing a car or buying a car, The article makes good points about the importance of planning ahead, budgeting, and making sure you have enough saved to buy a home, but to indicate that renting can be an alterative to buying as an option to build long term wealth is financial malpractice.
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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 nationally probate experts.

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