Hawaii Real Estate Reporter

Read This: “Housing prices stable, but sales plummet 29%,” From the Honolulu Advertiser, June 3, 2008

Well, this is just what we expected from the ever-sharp journalists at the newspaper. We have plummeting sales, but no mention of just one small detail – a record high median price for condominiums at $337,300. In their ongoing, generally useless comparison to last year, we have plummeting sales. Plummeting is worse by the way than falling, dropping, sliding, slipping, dipping, tumbling, sinking and of course plunging. Well, it’s close to plunging.

Let’s see, compared to April, there were 2 fewer condo sales, and 4 fewer single family home sales in May – yep, that’s plummeting. Of course, the comparisons are not within the year – something that actually matters to people interested in real estate. All comparisons are to 2007, which was a record year. There is also never any mention to 2007 being a record year.

We can now see a new angle the media is taking to find more “negative” stuff. Andrew Gomez writes in a Honolulu Advertiser article dated June 3,2008:

‘fewer sales will cause prices to drop’.

Never mind that sales have been dropping for 3 years while prices set records. We don’t want the facts to get in the way of a new thing to worry about. So be prepared for the new concern from your buyers – fewer sales will drive down prices. This even seems logical. The only problem is that there is no correlation between number of sales and prices. Just look at the numbers. If fewer sales lowered prices, prices would be approaching zero by now – not setting records. Oh, did I mention that Condos set a median-price record in May? I didn’t see it in this article.