Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Fun with headlines

I've talked before about the odd-but-explicable relationship between the Herald and real estate agents, so I shan't go on too much. But the fascinating relationship between today's housing prices headline - "Housing gains spark optimism" - and the content of the article is worth mentioning.
BNZ chief economist Tony Alexander warned against interpreting the figures as any big recovery or turnaround.

"I would not blindly extrapolate these figures to believe there's an upturn given tighter lending from banks, rising unemployment and the recent increases in longer-term fixed interest rates," he said.

[...] Nick Tuffley, ASB economist, said prices were still lacklustre and down 1.4 per cent on levels a year ago. He prefers a different set of data that show price drops of almost 10 per cent.

"While we expect that the housing market is now on a recovery path, it will be a mild recovery. The fundamentals for the housing market are not strong."

Now that's optimism! But at least agents are positive:
Peter Thompson, Barfoot & Thompson director, said: "The market is tough but we've got to move on and work with what we've got. It's not like it was three or four years ago."
Easy mate, don't get too carried away!

I think being the guy who writes the headlines would be the best job in the world.

2 comments:

  1. I think the guy who writes the headlines is the same guy who writes property listings.

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  2. And over at Your Views there is a very important announcement...

    "So what to do about it. I say we join forces- everyone who wants to buy, but cant afford it and is renting right now should stop paying rent. If we all do it together, all these greedy investors who pinched our house before we got out of uni/school and save a deposit will go bust and suddenly OUR houses will be back on the market at a price we can afford.

    Oh yeah, and do a blockade at auckland airport to stop more immigrants coming in."

    ReplyDelete