Arizona Daily Sun's article "Home Prices in Flagstaff Finally Drop"

181633 Resource 178435 178982 178982 1188611638459 1188663069219 Controlled Flagstaff’s Daily Paper Reports $580 Drop in Median Home Price

Is It News That Flagstaff Home Prices Are Down Less Than 1%?

One of the Arizona Daily Sun’s front page stories today was that Flagstaff home prices <a title="Arizona Daily Sun article on home prices" href="http://www.azdailysun.com/articles/2007/08/31/news/20070831_front%20page_4.txt" target="_blank">“dropped 0.55 percent in the second quarter of this year compared to the prior quarter.”</a> 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: <a title="Flagstaff Home Prices 2d Quarter 2006 vs. 2007" href="http://activerain.com/blogsview/146816/Flagstaff-Prices-Are-Falling" target="_blank">“Flagstaff Prices Are Falling! (A Bit) (Maybe).”</a>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 <a title="Daily Sun story in full" href="http://www.azdailysun.com/articles/2007/08/31/news/20070831_front%20page_4.txt" target="_blank">Daily Sun’s own story</a>.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, <a title="Mid-August Flagstaff real estate market" href="item/179948" target="_blank">the mid-August volume of sales looked better than the second quarter.</a> 9 application/xml false Flagstaff homes Flagstaff market report Flagstaff real estate Flagstaff real estate issues Flagstaff real estate sales Living in Flagstaff Arizona Daily Sun's article "Home Prices in Flagstaff Finally Drop" The Flagstaff Daily Paper reports the second quarter 2007 numbers for Flagstaff home prices per federal source http://www.azdailysun.com/articles/2007/08/31/news/20070831_front%20page_4.txt Flagstaff Home Prices for Second Quarter as Reported From Local Realtor® Association Numbers A not surprising small drop in home prices reported in early July http://activerain.com/blogsview/146816/Flagstaff-Prices-Are-Falling Number of Flagstaff Homes Sold in August Likely to Top June and July Numbers In part, because prices are falling item/179948 At least the story was below the fold. Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aheitland false true false false true 178975 false false true false false false true 178435 blog blogsite/BestFlagstaffHomes/web