Telling it Like It Is Does Not Sell…

…embellishing the facts further along the spectrum does.  To say that the real estate media landscape is biased is no revelation by any stretch of the imagination.  There are the respective agendas and it’s just the way it is.  It will always be up to us as consumers to decide how we want to react to it and consider its validity.  It’s up to us as real estate professionals to stay on top of public perception AND help our clients understand how such news affects their personal situation and goals.  We all have a job to do. 

I was amused by last Sunday 5/4 SF Chron Insight’s little back page column titled: The Bottom Line.  The headings Good Week and Bad Week drew me in to see how my own week compared to what made it into the column.  (check, check, more good than bad, doing ok!)  I scanned until I drilled into the words “Fair and balanced”.  I thought – wow, we could use some of that in our industry.  So I searched “Fair and balanced” and found it to be one of the news network’s terms.  A search for “fair and balanced real estate” led me to a post written 4/8/08 on News Hounds blog highlighting a rather unbalanced approach to the current state of affairs in real estate.  That is, one day it appears we may be finally rebounding, and the next a new report shows that we’re not.  I must admit part of me was expecting to find a fair and balanced real estate story, but instead I found the writer’s opinion that the news show they were writing about was not fair and balanced.  That’s fine, but I wanted to read something that I thought would be really unique.

It may always be up to us to bring the fair and balanced; however, unless there is trust, our writing probably won’t be viewed that way.  It will be viewed as another biased opinion about the real estate market.  Real estate agents who blog have an opportunity to get the real stories in their local market out there.  If we can discuss the good and the bad in a consistent manner, we have an opportunity to gain trust.  And our readers will continue to…react and consider its validity.   Thanks for reading.