The June 24, 2008 Honolulu Advertiser ran an article entitled “Home Prices Fall at Record Rate.” Pretty scarey huh?
Since this article is published in a Hawaii newspaper, and the first line indicates that US home prices went down, it is natural that a reader would think this article is about Hawaii. It isn’t. “The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index” on which the article was based contains no Hawaii data (it’s based on 20 US cities, none of which are in Hawaii). Therefore the results have nothing to do with Hawaii.
You would expect the local paper to disclose this rather important fact. They didn’t. We should be very careful not to make conclusions about Hawaii’s market based on National Real Estate trends. Hawaii’s unique situation (including our history of conservative lending practices, proximity to Asia, and ultra-high desirability) has shielded us from certain mainland trends.
In other words, Don’t Beleive the Hype!
July 8th, 2008 at 3:58 am
Why would a local paper mislead the community in such a way. This type of thoughtless journalism has the ability to wrech havoc on much more than the Real Estate market. If the Hawaii Real Estate market were portrayed correctly in the local papers, all factions of business would benefit.