Talking Heads & the Housing Market

Missing Voices

One of the oddities -- at least to me -- about selling real estate these days is to peruse Op-Ed pages full of people with opinions about the "true state" of the housing market, its future direction -- and what should be done to fix it.

Print journalists (there's an anachronism). Economists. Government officials. Elected politicians. "Members of the Media" (mainstream and minor). Think tank-types. Senior business executives. Financiers. Bloggers.

With some notable exceptions, most of these people are based in either New York or Washington, and none of them have real, boots-on-the-ground insight into the rhythms and nuances of the housing market -- their own locally, and certainly the national market (which is an agglomeration of hundreds of local markets).

The only voice missing from the cacophony?

Realtors' (and PR mouthpieces like NAR don't count).

P.S.: "caveat emptor" applies equally to ideas as well as to products.