“Trends are changing daily,” says Catherine Reagor in her column in the Arizona Republic. Was I a younger man, I might trouble myself to wonder about a “trend” that lasts less than a day. But I am older, by now, and wiser, and sick to death of picking on Catherine Reagor. At least this week, it is not she herself who is making things up, but rather a sales meeting full of crybaby Realtors.
Here are some facts, even though real estate reporting is evidently supposed to be fact-free. So far, there are 6,124 August sales recorded in the Phoenix-area MLS system. There are always errors in the system at the turn of the month, so it will be a few more days before the numbers settle down. The last relatively normal August was August of 2003, when 7,648 sales were recorded. So this August is weak by comparison, but it’s hardly the end of the world. We’re up about 50 houses over July 2006, and average prices are at 99.18% of their July value. I’ll have more later in the week, when the listings get cleaned up.
Meanwhile: “Phoenix has been ranked No. 1 in a new study of best relocation destinations.” Who’d a thunk it? Oh, wait… That would be me. It turns out that reports of our demise have been greatly exaggerated.
For Reagor, for the Republic, for the crybaby Realtors, for crybabies everywhere: Things might not ever be as good as you hope they’ll be, but rarely are they as bad as you might fear they could be.
Technorati Tags: arizona, arizona real estate, phoenix, phoenix real estate, real estate, real estate marketing
CJ, Broker in L A, CA says:
Greg, sorry this is off topic – you can go ahead and delete it after you read it — But have you checked Rain City Guide in the last few minutes? Rain City Guide has been hacked by “Cukorovali”
September 3, 2006 — 11:51 am
Greg Swann says:
Yes. I saw it this morning. Ardell and Robbie are aware of it. I haven’t heard about it from Dustin or Galen.
The mostly likely culprit is a straight hack: The vandals penetrated the file server and replaced the index.php page with their own version. Alternatively, they may have hacked the DNS server to make raincityguide.com point to a different IP address. Either way, this should be easily correctable by RCG’s ISP once they know about it. Ardell wondered about possible virus consequences, which seems unlikely, but Robbie pointed out that HTML potentially can be malicious, so it’s probably better not to play with fire. I have a web archive of the site as it stands right now and I see nothing hostile — nor even clever — in it, for what that’s worth.
September 3, 2006 — 11:59 am
JL says:
While Phoenix was rated as #1, this same list ranks Camden, NJ as #3. Makes me disregard this ranking.
September 3, 2006 — 1:19 pm
Dan says:
Check out the Trends section on http://www.RealBlogging.com – there is a number of great posts on the need for agents to change. Look especially at:
1. Can Existing Real Estate Brokerages Reengineer Themselves?
2. When is it Going to Stop?
3. Real Estate Brands Grow Stronger.
4. Is Real Estate Brokerage a Cartel?
5. It’s Time for Agents to Shift their Marketing Dollars
September 4, 2006 — 12:19 pm
Todd Tarson says:
Camden NJ?? Well, I was born there and believe me there is no where else for that city to go but up. I’m stunned that Camden is on that list. I wish there was more to that article to explain things further.
September 5, 2006 — 8:34 am