Phil Mahoney, Executive V.P. at Cornish and Carey had a letter to the editor in today's Mercury News, in which he objected to the negative headline in a recent issue, "Slumping home sales hit 15 year low for August."
Realtors have run into this problem before, and it has been explained to us by Sue McAllister of the Mercury staff that the headline writers, who lean toward sensationalism, are in a different department from tha real estate reporters. This explains, in part, why the second paragraph in the same article stated that the median home price was up over 11% from a year ago in Santa Clara County, and 9.4% in San Mateo County.
I agree with Mr. Mahoney that more balance in headlines would be helpful, but I think that he is not facing reality when he says, "There is no subprime mess here. This is not Southern California."
Leslie Appleton Young, economist for the California Association of Realtors, estimates that Santa Clara County will be 'low-end-challenged' for more than a year, and even into 2008, when the interest rates of many loans made earlier will jump.
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