"Reporting involves the gathering of information through interviewing and research, the results of which are turned into a fair and balanced story for publication or for television or radio broadcast." - What is Journalism? UWO [my emphasis]
NAR is presently at Disney World making some modest suggestions [1] for the new Administration:
- An interest-rate buy down, in which the government would subsidize a portion of a home buyer’s mortgage interest rate. A recent analysis by NAR found that a reduction of interest rates by 1 percentage point could result in 840,000 additional home sales and reduce the inventory of homes for sale by 20%.
- Eliminate the provision that requires users of the first-time home buyer tax credit, enacted earlier this year, to repay the money over time and extend that incentive to all home buyers.
- Make the increased conforming mortgage limits permanent. Rates on conforming jumbo loans haven’t improved as much as was hoped, partly because mortgage investors aren’t certain whether these higher limits will remain, Yun said.
———————————
[1]: "Home prices down 9.3% in 2008: NAR — Realtors lobby for housing stimulus, claim there’s no time to waste", by Amy Hoak, MarketWatch, November 7, 2008.
The projected 9.3% national decline in home prices this year would be the sharpest drop since the National Association of Realtors started keeping records in 1968, the group’s chief economist said Friday.
It’s also probably the biggest drop since the Great Depression, based on data from other sources, added Lawrence Yun, chief economist for industry group, speaking at the Realtors’ annual conference in Orlando.
To bring stability to the housing market, it’s imperative to work off the massive amount of for-sale housing inventory, he said. But with Americans tightening their purse strings and also feeling the shock of the huge stock market declines in October, there’s a concern that fearful consumers will scrap any plans they had to buy a home in the near future.
Young Ms Hoak has always gotten on my nerves. Please don’t get us started on NAR economists.
bonus rant:
The more I think about this story the angrier I’m getting. Amy is not even pretending to the craft of journalism here. A real reporter would at least make a pretense to balance by soliciting a critical viewpoint on those three key points NAR is trying to sell. From across a spectrum starting to the Left of Paul Krugman and ending to the Right of Peter Wallison, I can’t imagine a single voice who wouldn’t call these into serious question or simply denounce the whole package as dangerous codswallop. I ran a thought-experiment in the shower this morning. What would another viewpoint in this story have sounded like if one had been sought? Here’s my counter-factual fantasy: "Christopher Whalen, an analyst at Institutional Risk Analytics, was initially unavailable for comment. When he did get back to MarketWatch he was unable to stop laughing long enough to comment on NAR’s proposal."
Ms. Hoak has regular access to sources like MarketWatch, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. I assert that the present collapse of MSM readership owes much to the papers’ tolerance of reporters who are unthinking transcribers of some single point of view.
… and no, this post isn’t balanced. I’m a blogger 
How about some help for Joe the Renter?
John-
Poking holes in the NAR proposals is like hitting a barn at point blank range. It’s amazing they saw fit to print this stuff.
The solution needs to fit the problem. The main problem at the moment is that in this economy, buying a house for most folks is a BAD IDEA. Even with credits and buy downs, if people aren’t certain they are still going to have a job next year, it’s hard to get them excited about buying, no matter what the terms.
The NAR has been about GETTING people in homes, not KEEPING people in homes, so I guess you can’t blame them for not considering long term fundamentals. You can just blame the reporters that quote them.
Igor says “foolish”, as do I.
I used to get mad at quotes and stories like these from the NAR, Realtors and the media. Now it’s just background noise. “Blah, blah, blah, best time to buy/sell a house, blah, blah, blah…”, “Blah, blah, blah, these stocks are a once in a generation buying opportunity…blah, blah, blah…”, “Blah, blah, blah, we MUST do everything possible no matter how bad for everyone to keep these people in their homes and their home prices artificially elevated, blah, blah, blah…”
Igor says “downside”, I say blah blah blah.
John, why isn’t the NAR going to the Treasury for TARP money for its impaired members - “We have got to keep as many people in the Real Estate business as possible so there are ample agents to service the pent-up demand when it hits, and that’s right around the corner! We’ll structure a TARP loan around a give-up of 20% of our future commissions just so we can buy things in December to contribute to the economy. Seriously, you have NO IDEA how many impaired realtors are out there, and the continued collapse of the housing market is going to drive thousands of agents out of work.”
Anything and everything you read and hear anymore, has something to do with money, if it’s not blatantly obvious, it’s between the lines. To put it simply, everyone wants everyone elses money, they don’t care how they get it, they are so desperate they’ll take promissory notes from anyone with a john hancock, or wait, they might have stopped doing that when they finally realized people, the general populous, are generally broke.
It comes to no surprise to me that the NAR would be asking for additional handouts, I count the bank handouts as a handout to the NAR.
I used to work in a glass cube that was a subsidiary of John Hancock. Windows would fly out in a high wind