Yesterday I posted a link to a report by Genworth Financial that declared that “over the next four years, Vancouver condo demand is expected to slow to balance with supply, although a correction is not expected.”. As one poster commented, Genworth Financial was one of the first in Canada to insure zero-down and 40 year mortgages as part of their goal to “make homeownership more affordable and accessible throughout Canada”.
I’m not entirely clear how helping to drive up debt levels is helping this goal, but every company needs a slogan.
I see now that this story is running in the Province, pretty much verbatim from the press release. The story subtitle is ‘growth to continue without any correction’ which, though slightly plausible, is still surprising to see as a statement of absolute truth. Imagine a company issuing a press release with a prediction that their stock price will “rise about 6.2 per cent this year and average 4.4-per-cent annual growth through 2010”.
I don’t doubt that its difficult work being a reporter, but wouldn’t it be more efficient and cheaper for the paper to just reprint the press release without the byline? If the market does correct, I expect we’ll see a lot more of these press releases from real estate agencies, banks, mortgage brokers, etc. If we hit year over year price drops then we’ll get the ones that say ‘the worst is over!’.
Paying reporters to retype these press releases over and over seems inefficient at best.
