Benn – I guess good new will be bad new for someone else and vise-versa…..especially in real estate. It goes back on the way we should be responsible and accountable for communicating data – take a look at Tom’s article

That’s just one story, but it demonstrates my belief that buyers are the key to firing up the market regardless of the motivation.

Thanks for pointing out the variables.

I like your assessment of the newsweek blog post. Its the subtle manipulation of words, nuances and inferences drawn from data that gave the blog post it overall effect.

However I disagree with the statement “its good news for those folks in those markets”
Good news perhaps for home searchers who may now be able to afford a home, and good news for realtors and lenders who may see an uptick in business, but certainly bad news for all those losing their homes…….

I actually do believe that the negative play on words does a great job of saying something constructive to the market, whether he intended to or not- it says to buyers of those markets something great is happening, and this is your moment, so get out and find yourself a great deal.

I’d like to think that BW put a lot of thought into the psychology of their statement, but I have no data to support it so we’ll just go with “Title Fail” for the moment- but would give two thumbs up to the probable reaction of a buyer reading the article.

I’m just walking away from the BW article with a smile, because at the end of the day, it’s good news for those folks in those markets.

I agree inferences (the increase in searches is due to lower prices) and semantics (the term “bottom fishers”) impact people differently.

I was neither offended by the plausible conclusion of Palmieri’s newsweek blog post even though such conclusion may not have been arrived at through the scientific method, nor was I offended by the term bottom fishers.

While I may not agree with Palmieri’s inference drawn or the characterization of the searchers, I am sure a large percentage of intelligent people might have also drawn the same conclusion and made the same characterization of the searchers.

Thanks for pointing out that a large percentage of intelligent people could draw different inferences and chose to name those doing the searches something more benign than bottom fishers.

Louis, and some of those 5am shopper are just gung-ho shoppers that love the experience (you will never find me in any of those super sale days even close to a mall – it freaks me out) – I think we agree on the problem of “inferences”

Bob – you gave more facts in your one line statement than the author of that BW post. We also need to define “bottom fishing” – one thing is for people looking for lower price ranged properties and something totally different is for people bottom fishing.
I can tell you that 3 months ago I was bombarded by European and South American inquiries of $200k condos on the ocean in Miami Beach. These people heard that our market was doing poorly, so they assumed that those type of properties were available – a lot of them ended up buying $400k-$500k units, but I cannot define them as bottom-fishers because of their original inquiries.

If R.com’s traffic is up, with a corresponding increase of searches in the low ranges – at a rate that is higher than historical numbers and/or trends, then the assumption is not baseless.

My own historical data goes back 6 years and covers over 100k registered search users, not merely uniques, and their searches. My recent traffic measured against the historical trends of my data would suggest a similar conclusion.