Elizabeth Razzi formally apologized in Sunday's Washington Post for missing 2,500 houses in her search for houses in Fairfax County under $350,000:
Not a Rounding ErrorNow we must examine a suspicious-looking statistic in today's article (posted below) from Reuters:
In last week's column, I said that a quick search of homes for sale in Fairfax County showed only six properties priced at $350,000 or below. I was incredulous at the figure -- and should have been much more so. That was the result of repeated searches on one brokerage's Web site, but other sites (and numerous real estate agents) showed the true number to be in the thousands. I apologize for the error.
At the end of 2007, 20 of the 25 houses for sale for more than $850,000 in Loudoun County appeared to be foreclosures, according to Tony Arko, [local realtor Danilo Bogdanovic's] partner.Currently a search of ZipRealty shows 427 properties for sale (88 of those listings are new construction) in Loudoun County priced at more than $850,000. I haven't gone through them to see which ones appear to be foreclosures, but I'm nearly positive it's less than the 80% the Reuters article is quoting. I also refuse to believe that at the end of 2007 there were only 25 houses for sale in Loudoun that cost more than $850,000.
Did the Reuters reporter misquote Bogdanovic and Arko, or just what is going on this time?
Update: Perhaps the words causing the confusion for me are "for sale" instead of "sold". It does look like anything priced over $800K is very challenging to sell, and it's possible that a high percentage of these few that did sell were foreclosures.
MRIS data:
Update #2: "Harriet, Thanks for pointing this out. It should read "20 of the 25 houses under contract". I will let Andy Sullivan know and hopefully he can change it. Thanks again.
Posted by: Tony Arko | April 08, 2008 at 06:02 PM"
from the Loudoun Foreclosures Blog.
9 comments:
I heard this on the radio this morning on the way to work, along with, I think, the statistic of national average foreclosure occurence, one house in some hundreds, I don't remember the figure.
The slant of the story was, "Loudon County is very high society but even here is getting hit with high foreclosures--therefore, the rich must be taking out 'risky subprime mortgages' TOO!"
Fun with statistics.
LOL Never mind--I see you quoted the article in a previous post, and even the article (not just the radio blurb) actually tries to make the rich-people/subprime connection!
The rich took out interest only loans/ARMs that perhaps maybe now are resetting?
I can see how they confuse that with "subprime" - and agree they shouldn't be called as such.
Of course, I'm sure some of the rich had some sort of liar loans where they didn't fully/truthfully disclose income.
The rich took out interest only loans/ARMs that perhaps maybe now are resetting?
Say it isn't so! We don't know anyone who did that... ;)
The funniest bit is when the 'rich' have their HELOC's cut off and scream they've been 'denied their savings.'
This downturn is refered to as the 'great squish down' for a reason. The greatest over-investment was on high end housing. For the next two to four years declines in 'high end' housing will drive the market.
Got Popcorn?
Neil
Harriet, does it bother you that these "expert" reporters are so sloppy, or so out-of-touch that they don't sufficiently question figures that don't sound right? that after having to publicly apologize for one error, they turn around and make another? "For sale" is pretty different from "sold", and readers shouldn't have to guess what the reporters meant. I don't know Loudoun or Fairfax county and I'm not a Realtor, but when I read both of those figures in the paper even I thought they didn't sound right. This really makes me wonder about the credibility, knowledge, and judgment of the reporters and whether anything else they say is correct. We all make mistakes, but geez...
The price of good journalism is eternal harassment of the reporter by well-educated citizens.
*sigh*
Maybe after about 50 of these she'll start to learn how to ask hard-hitting questions herself.
Here is the corrected version of the story -- looks like they still have some correcting to do.
http://tinyurl.com/55sso6
Ace-
"This really makes me wonder about the credibility, knowledge, and judgment of the reporters and whether anything else they say is correct."
Razzi's not a journalist, she just advertises under the guise of one.
Million, she did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
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