I have said it before and I will say it again – An ongoing issue in the real estate market as far as I am concerned is the continuing efforts of certain sections of the real estate business, government and news media to “talk up the market,” presumably in an effort to get things moving again. Personally, I think this is a mistake and is actually having the opposite effect. Persuading the sheeple to buy, buy, buy, before they get priced out of the market!! is not the problem. Persuading the banks to lend, lend, lend!!! is the problem, and the banks are foreclosing, foreclosing foreclosing!!!! at the moment.
The level of confusion is high and headlines such as “Hamptons Home Prices Rise as Buyers Return to $2 Million Deals,” from Bloomberg yesterday with an editorial that then goes on to say, “the Hamptons are still experiencing the effects of a recession and crisis that drove New York City’s unemployment rate to 10.3 percent in August.” and explain that median prices are actually down 9.4% and the “Buyers returning” was actually 46 transactions, is not helping. Bloomberg
I am not the only one noticing this and beginning to despair that the media, government and real estate agents who seem to think the general public is stupid and are not going to notice that property prices are still going down in most parts of the world. Michael Marquette remarks, “It’s impossible to miss the complete garbage that real estate agents are quoted saying in the newspapers each and every day. If I could get a dollar for every time I heard someone quoted as saying that prices are about to soar I would be retired in the south of France.” Michael Marquette at LRE
Things are even worse in some parts of the world. The Dubai government Inc is getting desperate to say the least and a recent headline in the major Emirates news Media press release farms reads “Dubai property prices rise 30%!!!! which is almost laughable.
The British newspapers are almost, but not quite as bad, with The London Times having announced, Property prices Surge !! about twice a month just for good measure. Not sure who they think they are going to fool, as the ongoing financial crisis in the UK is taking out pension funds and major companies almost as quickly as unemployment is rising and the government is fast running out of places to borrow money from. Yet house prices are rising? Dear oh dear.
The other problem to consider is who is going to believe it when things do actually settle down and things start to return to “normal.” with the media crying wolf since the downturn began, who exactly are we going to trust? Citibank? Credit Suisse? 
What is wrong with admitting that the real estate market is like any other market – prices go down as well as up.
