When To Keep Quiet While Promoting Home Sales

It's not only poor advertising and marketing of individual properties which can negatively impact the real estate market. Here is still another case where it goes as far as reporting of statistical information.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution, the largest newspaper in all of Georgia, took the most recent information release from the Atlanta Realtors Association and presented the negative about the current market right along with the positive.

This news story begins with the information about the dip in both home sales and home prices during the most recent full month of August. The story goes on to say, in the first couple of sentences, that the "number of homes for sale is still much weaker than the amount of buyer demand for homes".

A local consumer reading only that part of the news story sees "dip in home sales" and "number of homes for sale is still much weaker....", and comes away thinking that the local real estate market is miserable.

All because of a story based on information provided by the local realty association.

I'll bet you that a percentage of the members of the Association would tell you individually that some houses "sell themselves". While the very same Association is putting out negative sounding information to local consumers.

How do we solve this problem? It's actually quite easy. Only report the positive statistics.

Had the Association simply reported that "A total of 5,191 homes were sold within the month of August alone!", and how that was an increase over the number of sales during August 2015, it would have been much different.

Local consumers would then come away thinking there is growth in the local real estate market, and perhaps consider looking into selling or buying.

Chances are that the local media would have picked up the positive spin just as easily and run with it. Instead, many realty associations, and it is far from being just Atlanta, continue to churn out negative facts as if they are necessary.

Let's see if some houses really can sell themselves.



http://www.ajc.com/news/business/atlanta-home-prices-sales-and-supply-all-chill-in-/nsZKk/