Flagstaff’s Daily Paper Reports $580 Drop in Median Home Price

One of the Arizona Daily Sun’s front page stories today was that Flagstaff home prices “dropped 0.55 percent in the second quarter of this year compared to the prior quarter.” At least the story was below the fold. It’s hardly news that the price of homes in Flagstaff have stagnated this year. For example, take a look at some numbers for the same periods from the Northern Arizona Association of Realtors^®, as I reported them in early July: “Flagstaff Prices Are Falling! (A Bit) (Maybe).”

The Daily Sun story, reported by Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services, was based on new numbers released Thursday by the federal Office of Housing Enterprise Oversight. The “news” was said to be that Arizona-wide, housing prices went into the red for the second quarter of 2007-- the first time that's happened since 1991. But that was the second quarter of 2007 compared to the 1st quarter of 2007. Even with the quarterly decline, Arizona did manage to post a 2.2 percent increase in home prices over the same period a year earlier, according to the Daily Sun’s own story.

So, does this prove that one can prove anything if one picks the right set of numbers to report?  At least you can make a headline (and get the name of a Realtor^® in the paper – thank you to Joe Ferguson of the Daily Sun, who called me for the comment). It seems to me like it’s lots of fuss about very little movement – very little loss. The news is that the gains have stopped, not that losses are happening. Given the gains of over 20% in Flagstaff home prices each year for several years, and over 30% in one year, Flagstaff homeowners are faring pretty well, so far, in the housing so-called slump.  Incidentally, the mid-August volume of sales looked better than the second quarter.