Picture this: a noon news story on Global TV that has a financial expert talking about 25% house price declines in Vancouver. It happened and AJ Sull from Pacifica Partners Capital Management played the counterpoint to the Royal LePage argument that everyone wants to live here:
Of course, by the time the story was repeated at 6pm, it had changed a bit.
Meanwhile over at news1130 they’re reporting on Joe Castaldos warning to young buyers about the ‘normalacy’ of this market and the National Post has a comment about the lack of election talk around a Canadian housing bubble.
In a comment yesterday reader Real Professional commented about the medias difficulty in finding voices of balance when it comes to real estate. There’s no shortage of Realtors who long for that moment of airtime to raise their profile but when was the last time you heard somebody talk about the potential downside of the product they were peddling?
Even if a reporter can find talking heads for both points of view the publisher or broadcaster of the news product may be disinclined to upset advertisers. Reader Southseacompany points out this tidbit about Sun reporter Ben Parfitts early stories on the leaky condo crisis and pressure from advertisers to bury the news.
So what does it tell you if there are all these reasons why we don’t see mainstream media stories about housing bubbles, and yet we’re starting to see all these stories about a housing bubble? Reporters, economists, former politicians, etc.. Is this the tipping point?
