Media Mistakes

The Post and Courier has done it again. They reported this week that the sales price of homes has risen while the number of sales is off 30%. The mistake they continue to make is to look at all categories of items in the MLS at once instead of reporting on single family homes separately from condos, flats, boat slips, time shares, quadraplexes, etc. The median sales price of just single family homes was $222,900 for the period of 1/1/07-6/10/07 while it has dropped to $211,500 for the period of 1/1/08-6/10/08. This is a 5.1% drop in sales price, not an increase. They only got the increase in sales price by lumping in condos, flats, boat slips, duplexes, etc. For the last 12 months, condo sales prices are UP $106,000!!! That might skew the numbers. For those of you wondering why this is, the sales of lower priced condos is way off while higher priced condos continue to sell. It's not that the all condos have gone up, it's just that only the higher priced ones are selling. This huge aberration in sales price of condos has been lumped in with all the numbers and allows the Post and Courier to tell the story the way they want to. I've talked to Katy at the paper and tried to convince her that she needs to separate the numbers, but they have no interest in listening.