Real [Estate] Kudos to The Oregonian
Posted on November 29, 2007
Filed Under Selling Real Estate, Buying Real Estate, Real Estate, General |
The Oregonian certainly has a lot to criticize, and I’ve done my share. The news is tainted by du jour obsessions - right now it’s global warming - and the editors still spend a little too much energy on taking the New York Times seriously.
But I do think there’s a sincere effort to listen to critics, and react accordingly when appropriate. We in real estate are daily in the throes of how to manage a toughening market, but our task is brief simplicity compared to maintaining the relevance of the print medium. The Oregonian, I think, does a far better job than most.
Recently there’s been a lot of complaint about the effect media have had on the psychology of buying a home. As I wrote back in July, it’s especially frustrating in the Portland area where fundamentals are essentially good, but every time someone opens a newspaper or turns on the TV he or she is greeted with Chicken Little hysteria. So when I saw the Drudge headline a couple days ago - Home Prices Fall 4.5%! - I thought…uh oh.
But there, front page above the fold, is the headline that ran yesterday. This morning, on the front page of the Weekly insert is “A soft landing for real estate“. My initial fear was that The Oregonian was running make-nice puff pieces to appease two significant sources of revenue, but no. In Ryan Frank’s piece yesterday, and Dana Tims’s and Steve Mayes’s today, the bad was included with the good, and there was in each case a good analysis of what’s really happening in Portland Metro real estate.
Well done, and thank you.
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