|
Share the Love
|
Get Free Updates
|
Home Values Plunged 91.48% … or that is what you might believe if you were unfortunate enough to trust the journalism standards of Yahoo! Finance. In what can only be described as gross negligence, Yahoo! published an article from US News and World Report on what it felt was the top 10 bargain retirement spots in the US.
According to this work of fiction, Tallahassee is the 2nd best city for retirees to buy a home because our home values dropped “91.48%” between 2009 and 2010. In her story from 2/22/2011, Emily Brandon states
Housing prices are declining fastest in Portland, Ore. (-92 percent), Tallahassee, Fla. (-91 percent), and Tucson, Ariz. (-88 percent).
The article shows in its data source that the current median home price in Tallahassee is $149,000 and thus through extrapolation, we presume Ms. Brandon must believe that the median home price in Tallahassee, in 2009, was roughly $1.75M. Based upon my experience as a 20 year veteran of the Tallahassee real estate market, and the publisher of the most analytical newsletter on local real estate market conditions in Tallahassee, I can say with a fair degree of certainty that our median home price in 2009 was not $1.75M (actual average single family detached home price in 2009 was $192K).
Now mind you, if it were just a numerical slip-up, I would just pass it off as sloppy journalism and editorial oversight. But she used this information as the foundation of her article.
Ms. Brandon believes that seniors will get bargains by moving away from where they live and heading to markets where values have plunged by as much as 92%! Think about that for a second … If values are plunging off the charts, doesn’t that mean that the rats are jumping from a sinking ship? Do you really think there will be a healthy environment to be found by seniors in markets that suffer this level of distress?
The article by Ms. Brandon only serves to reinforce my observation that numbers don’t lie, but people do, which was published, ironically, right about the same time as the article in US News and World Reports. I would strongly recommend, regardless of your market of choice, that when deciding whether to buy or sell a home, that you find the local real estate market expert who continually provides charts, graphs, and analysis of the real estate market. If you’re not sure, just let me know and I’ll tell you who I would work with in that market.
If you enjoyed this article, you'll love our Weekly Special (it's free).
Email Address:
This site runs on the Thesis WordPress Theme
If you are someone who does not understand a lot of PHP, HTML, or CSS, Thesis will give you a ton of functionality without having to alter any code. For the advanced, Thesis has incredible customization possibilities via extensive hooks and filters. And with so many design options, you can use the template over and over and never have it look like the same site.
If you are more familiar with how websites work, you can use the fantastic Thesis Users Guide and world-class support forums to make more professional customizations than you ever thought possible. The theme is not only highly customizable, but it allows me to build sites with a much more targeted focus on monetization than ever before. You can find out more about Thesis below:
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Awesome analysis, Joe. I’m using your analysis in my math classes in Singapore. So many people are “innumerate” it is pathetic. This is just bad math and bad analysis – period.
Thanks Roy. I like that term, innumerate, you’ll see it again!
{ 2 trackbacks }