It is truly sad to see what's happened to the journalism profession. I'm not sure if I blame the journalism schools, or the newspapers. But when America needed real reporters, we got incompetence. We got corruption. We got laziness. We got stupidity. And we got reporters in bed with corporate interests, and we got lies printed as truth.
Bad reporters got tens of thousands killed in Iraq. Bad reporting cost America trillions in economic damage. Bad reporters have helped destroy communities, and have laid waste to the land.
Reporters like Reagor and Cohen all around America gave David Lereah and Lawrence Yun and the National Association of Lying Realtors on Commission a free pass these past eight years. They quoted them as if they were true "experts", as if their data was real, and as if they had no agenda. And this problem continues, as you'll see in a second.
So I'll call out this reporter by name, as we did with "Rolodex of Realtors" Catherine Reagor at the Arizona Republic before him.
SPECIAL NOTE TO AUBREY COHEN AT THE SEATTLE POST "INTELLIGENCER":
LAWRENCE YUN AT THE NAR IS A PAID SHILL. HE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED, QUOTED OR RESPECTED. IT IS YOUR JOB TO MOCK HIM, TO TROUNCE HIM, TO FACT CHECK HIS STATEMENTS, OPINIONS AND DATA. IT IS NOT YOUR F*CKING JOB TO TAKE WHAT HE SAYS, ADD NO INDEPENDENT DATA OR CONTRARY OPINION, AND REPORT IT AS TRUTH UNDER A HEADLINE THAT HE WOULD HAVE WRITTEN HIMSELF.
YOU HAVE FAILED YOUR PROFESSION, YOUR READERS, YOUR COMMUNITY AND YOUR NATION. AGAIN.
But hey, what's a real-estate-ad-supported newspaper reporter supposed to do? Do some independent investigation? Nah. It's just sooooo much easier to take what the paid shill from the totally discredited NAR says and print it as truth.
Please join me in contacting the PI's real estate "reporter" Aubrey Cohen at 206-448-8362 or aubreycohen@seattlepi.com, and remind him how a real reporter is supposed to do his job. How someone with a Masters of Journalism is supposed to report.
What the hell did they teach Aubrey at Northwestern? Did he ever go to a class? Is he trying to protect the Seattle PI's real estate advertisers? Is he trying to protect his own home's value from falling even further?
Here's his disaster of an "article". Not one fact. Not one alternate viewpoint. Not one hard-hitting question. Not one statement that the NAR is a discredited lobbyist organization responsible for the greatest financial crash in world history. And not one sign that Aubrey Cohen should remain employed as a 'reporter', or that the Seattle PI deserves to stay in business.
Man, I feel sorry for the people of Seattle today. They're suffering an epic housing collapse, at the same time their local rag prints this spin from the NAR as truth. In all my years of doing this, I think this is the low point for local media. Nice work Aubrey!
House prices put mortgages in reach - Payments line up with wages again
By AUBREY COHEN
P-I REPORTER
Nationwide home prices have fallen far enough, when combined with current low mortgage interest rates, to get payments back in line with wages, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors said Friday in Bellevue.
"We believe that the home prices have already fallen to what could be justifiable," economist Lawrence Yun said, noting that mortgage payments for a typical household buying a typical house last year were back to 1998 levels, as a percentage of income.
"One may even argue that home prices are underpriced," he said, because that calculation was based on higher interest rates than current rates.
The re-emergence of multiple offers on some California homes "suggests to me that prices may be bottoming or have bottomed out in the California market," Yun said.
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32 comments:
Here's ANOTHER Front Page above-the-fold Gem brought to you recently by the soon-to-be-dead Seattle PI and a local used-house peddler Member of the REIC recently "predict housing slump's demise'. Too Funny. FRONT PAGE "PREDICTIONS"!
http://www.raincityguide.com/2009/02/12/ardell-obama-front-page-above-the-fold
Now, here is the REIC used-peddlers web site:
http://www.raincityguide.com
Scroll to the bottom of the page for a real 'who's who' in the REIC in Seattle, et. al. A real list of cutting edge pros.
If you have a few minutes, why not e-mail your comments on these wonderfully rosy predictions. Maybe you want to buy some property, get a loan, or, just 'learn' about the local market from these real estate "professionals"...
P.T. Barnum was RIGHT...
America, Turd World Nation of Nothing.
"One may even argue that home prices are underpriced,"
One may even argue that Yun's credibility has bottomed and his salary is overpriced.
Nice pwnage tonight, Keith.
No one will miss the P-I.
You hit upon something that always bothered me about many newspaper reporters. They're not sceptical (as they spell it down here) enough.
When I was in the biz, I always assumed that everyone was lying to me, or at least spinning/telling half-truths. I didn't like it, but I didn't hold it completely against them. It's like with snakes -- you know they bite; it's what they do, so you have to be aware of it and prepare.
So what I'd try to do is learn as much about the subject as possible, whether it was toxic waste incinerators or who poisoned those seven black children to death. (One of the best stories I covered, full of lying police and prosecutors who almost got an innocent man electrocuted.) I reckoned that news sources were all trying to bullshit me, and if I accepted what they said without checking it out, I'd look like a chump.
Too bad that so many reporters don't care whether they get pwn'ed. They're not paranoid enough. I fall on the side of being TOO paranoid, but I'd rather be that way than get snookered. To paraphrase garret Morris's old line from when "Saturday Night Live" was funny, "Paranoia been berry, berry good to me."
Then again, when you look at how many sheeple get fleeced by the FIRE scammers. It's not just reporters who are dupes. But it's their business NOT to be.
Is Lawrence Yun right or will High End home in places like California be the next to fall.
Remember those Option Arm, Alt-A, and NINJA loans were made for high end homes, and these loans will be resetting starting November, 2009.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG9Ay5Ie_EQ
Interview with Eric Trump
"The fundemental problem with real estate right now is not being able to borrow money."
People with 720 FICO score who make several million dollar a year can not get mortgage on a apartment with 40% in for a million dollar unit.
In some market you can not get mortgage in Nevada, Florada, and California unless you get 50% in.
You face another problem with real estate which is call unemployment - with big companies going out of business people simply can not afford New York prices any more and naturally you have supply and demand will kick in.
Seattle is infected with the dreaded Moziloitis and Lawrence Yun disease, not to be confused with AIDS or Lou Gherigs' disease.
AIDS and LGS nowhere near as fatal...
Like the FluPandemic of 1918, Mozilo and Yun will be responsible for not yet calculable pain, suffering and financial horror.
When will Eric Holder begin doing his Job?
Forget about skin color and BEGIN ARRESTING THE CROOKS, THEIVES and LIARS. All of Them including members of the local REIC.
DO IT NOW.
NAR = Enemy of the State.
Isn't History Home Price still 50% above base line, so how could California housing be below bottom when all those Option Arm, Alt-A, and NINJA haven't even begin to reset.
View Robert Shiller updated Historical Home Price chart.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/
images/2009/Feb/
saupload_case_shiller_chart_
updated.png
Not as much tax benefit for owning a home these day if you are rich.
Did you wanted to deduce All of your interest rate from your Jumbo Loans.
How about those rental homes, did you wanted to deduce all of those interest rate also.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/27/
real_estate/
mortgage_interest_deduction_
slashed/
The Obama administration hopes to tap the rich to help pay for its ambitious programs. Specifically, that would include slashing mortgage interest deductions for high-income taxpayers.
The proposal would cap at 28% the tax break for itemized deductions.
That would leave people in higher marginal tax brackets of 33% and 35% - the wealthiest Americans - with a smaller benefit from the deduction of mortgage interest, state and local taxes and other items such as charitable contributions.
Have you calculated the effect of dropping rental price in your real estate model.
With California unemployment rate at 10.1% and growing, do new landlords who brought rental homes in the past five years with option arm, Alt-A, and NINJA loans have enough working capital to make the payment when the rental market takes a hard hit at the middle of next year.
http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=c1g15SJacxY
Suzi Orman said "A Home is Not a Home"
SAW A VERY NICE SUBURBAN nyc COUNTRY HOUSE FOR SALE AT TODAYS CALIFORNIA DISTRESSED PRICE OF 117,000 3BD 2BTH 2CG...........HOPE INDECISION DOES NOT MAKE ME MISS THE CHANCE OF PRICES FALLING ANOTHER 50 PERCENT AND MY NOT CARING AS THAT BEING PAID OFF WOULD MEAN JUST LOWER TAXES SINCE IM NOT PLANING OF FLIPPING OR RENTING OUT TO RAPE THE COMMUNITY ... ER... RAISE TAXES AND MAKE RICHER COMMUNITY???????????????????????
Newspapers may actually make a comeback.
Once the depression hits full force, internet advertising will dry up, taking most web sites (like this one) with it. The ads are always for discretionary products and services that people will no longer be able to afford. And J6P will not be able to afford high-speed internet access either. How much fun will it be to surf the remaining sites over dial-up?
Economic activity will become more local. People will focus on necessities like groceries and car repair, and the availability of local jobs. Newspapers are better suited for that kind of advertising and reporting.
99.9% of blogs are written by people who just have something to say. the google ads might buy you a beer a day, that's about it.
so when all advertising drops off, which it is, especially the reic ads, you'll see the newspapers fold up first, then local tv stations, then cable tv stations, then internet sites with staff.
blogs may be all that's left, linking to stories from national and international press. but no local sources except other blogs.
stay tuned.
Call them out Keith...You are right on about the papers. They got lazy & greedy at the same time by accepting bribes ....Errrr I mean ad's from the REIC & Car dealers. They stopped printing the "truth" and started printing the "spin" as not to insult their to contributors. I would love for a new local paper to spring up that just tells it like it is but I am not holding my breath.
Google's only revenue comes from advertising. If internet advertising dries up, do you think Google will be around to provide blogspot?
Woodward and Bernstein are no more. Newspapers could no longer afford to allow them to exist. Don’t want to offend the advertisers, no ad revenue. Don't want to offend school board, city hall, state house, DC, ad nauseum, won't have access to politicos or get invited to next press conference.
Oh NO! Got to keep those rabble-rousers with their pesky embarrassing questions and obsession with facts, in line at all costs.
Unfortunately it worked.
Shame.
I invited Aubrey to come see the exciting buzz she created.
aubreycohen@seattlepi.com
Very few reporters tend to look for both sides of an issue anymore. It's fine to remain objective - but you can't expect to remain relevant if you only present 1/2 a story. True, CA prices may have come down somewhat, but 1 out of every 10 people is now unemployed and/or about to lose their jobs - now true that those 10% might all be illegal immigrants, but CA as a state is in extreme financial distress. It doesn't take a lot of effort for a reporter to look up the median income in an area, and look up the median cost of a house and determine if it's actually true that housing is coming back in line with salaries. A good reporter would have hung Yun out to dry for his creative stats.
What frustrates me is that they are able to find seemingly objective third party quotes to back up the NAR press releases that they print.
You pointed out that Nicholas Retsinas at Harvard's Joint Center for the Study of Housing is a paid shill. In DC, we have Stephen Fuller from the George Mason Center for Regional Analysis. That man has been blowing sunshine via newsprint, radio, and maybe television in DC for years.
The schools should be ashamed that they rent out their good names for industry quotes and the newspapers should be ashamed for not realizing it.
"How much fun will it be to surf the remaining sites over dial-up?"
If the shit really, really hit the fan the government would nationalize ISPs and give access for free. The internet is one of the easiest ways to keep the masses from rioting.
"...It doesn't take a lot of effort for a reporter to look up the median income in an area, and look up the median cost of a house and determine if it's actually true that housing is coming back in line with salaries..."
"...In San Diego County, the median income for a family of four is $63,400/year..."
Yet the median home is $450k; do the math. We'll fall another 50% easy.
MORE Fans of Lawrence Yun and the honest, facts based NAR:
NAR - Seth Godin Says Change Your Ways
March 1st, 2009 • Tom Royce • 3 comments • Related • Filed Under
Filed Under: Real Estate
Whenever a trade association raises the barricades and tries to lobby their way into maintaining the status quo, they are doing their members a disservice. Instead of spending time and insight and effort reinventing what they do and organizing for a better future, the members are lulled into a sense of security that somehow, somehow, the future will be just like today.
The key takeaway isn’t that the lobbying doesn’t work (though it usually doesn’t). The problem is that the lobbying takes your attention away from the changes you can actually control and implement. Simple example: why doesn’t the NYSRA have a staff of unofficial inspectors who help their members get an A when the real inspector comes around? Why didn’t the RIAA help the record industry figure out how to transform into an industry that would embrace and leverage file sharing?
– Seth Godin
The National Association of Realtors and the MLS’s across the country are guilty of these tactics. Even Realtor.com is seen by most Realtor’s as a way to pull money out of their wallet, not as a driving tool to help them be more successful.
Protecting the status quo in static times is not always bad. However, in dynamic times such as these the organization turns into a detriment to the industry. The attempt to be protectionist and maintain what we have ends up bringing everyone down.
Spending money on advertising that it is a great time to buy a house when the market is melting does not help real estate agents in the eyes of the public.
Paying economists to only give positive news does not help Realtors improve their public standing. It only raises skepticism of the whole industry.
MLS’s that put barriers to sharing information to protect their interests instead of opening it up to empower their agents helps only the Trulia’s and Zillow’s.
A trade organization that is truly out to help it’s members would be running conferences like RETechSouth that would be exploring the cutting edge, not fighting to maintain a status quo that is slipping away.
*There is more text to the article but did not want to post any more. You get the picture?
Eric Holder, Where ARE YOU?
NAR = Enemy of the State
It's hard to find an honest, objective rag these days.
Too many agendas going on.
Interesting video from Seattle PI
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com
/seattle911/archives/163025.asp
Keith, you are a master. You should be the Editor of that paper, or a group of papers and mags. I can easily imagine you calling that reporter in your office and shoving that piece of garbage up his a$$.
Well put Keith! Pretty soon, those third-rate publications will all disappear--the next victims of the NAR! They don't know it yet, but it's coming!
I used to laugh at the realtor spin on facts and figures, but lately it has become pathetic enough to make me sick. Here is one pulled straight out of the ass of a local “expert” realtor in her NP column today:
“Statistics show that the median price of a house in 1996 was $140,000 (US). Today, that same home would have gained more than $100,000 in value and in most cases locally, this property would have doubled in value.” Here she is relying on the old standby of 6% value increase per yr, then decides to really crank up the BS machine and says it “doubled” locally in most cases.
Very next paragraph,: “In addition to looking at the return on this initial investment…” Whoa, return? We didn’t even consider PITI, maintenance & repairs?
I tested this spewing of “data” against our local MLS (re-sales in past 2 mos. of homes built and sold ’95 – ’97). Of 21 sales, the average increase in sale price was 45%, or 3.7% per yr. 2 sales showed losses of 1 & 3%. The 2 high increases were 78% & 80% that were TOTAL renovations. A review of the local data shows a figure 36% - 55% lower than the realtor’s BS.
REALTORS: You might want to TEST the data against the local market you serve before you spew it to avoid looking like a hugely Ignorant, Dumb-Ass LIAR.
Good reporters are fast becoming history. I watched with sadness Rory Kennedy's film about Helen Thomas and her 60 years at the White House, and how she was shunned away by Bush for being too agressive in her questions. She wrote "Watchdog of Democracy?" criticizing her peers for not doing their job properly.
She's now 89 years old and still shows up at the White House briefings. Given the sad state of reporting nowadays, she'll probably be remembered as the last real journalist in America!
Seattle -- Starbucks, Boeing & Microsoft. Microsoft is hitting the skids, and Windows7 will also fail. Boeing -- any defense industry will suffer, as they always do under the democrats. Starbucks is being beaten by McDonalds, so do you really need any more explaination? Next!
I just can't figure out why newspapers are suffering. Business is not good -- so companies must buy ads, ads and more ads, just to keep the customers coming in the door. My wife attacks the Sunday paper like a piranha, because there is such a variety of bargains. Newspapers should be raking it in right now. What is wrong with these people?
"Anonymous said...
Interesting video from Seattle PI
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com
/seattle911/archives/163025.asp"
This would make an excellent training video on how to treat NAR members who resist...
Priceless.
@ Lost Cause at 10:25
Sooner or later, the advertisers will realize that they are targeting a broke audience.
Then the ads stop.
"Newspapers may actually make a comeback."
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *gasp* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
No, go ahead, pull the other one. I can't wait to hear how it's cheaper to buy raw paper and pay a staff to print and distribute a physical product than it is to push digital text to cell phones with a fraction of the staff.
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