Throw empircal analysis, well thought out discussions, global insight, and actual data aside for a second.
I was talking with an experienced real estate broker yesterday after a speaking engagement and she made an observation that I had not given too much thought to. It struck a chord with me, and I don’t really understand why it did because it was so basic.
Some background.
I think people tend to read news sources that they find comforting, speak their language, come from their perspective. I have addressed this with housing bubble blogs specifically before here on Matrix. Political conservatives gravitate toward publications like The National Review [1] while political liberals may be more likely to read The New Republic [2] and I have it on good authority that real estate appraisers read Sports Illustrated [3] (no, not for the Swimsuit edition).
Ok, I’m back.
This agent’s sellers tended to rely on (aka cherry pick) real estate news from local newspapers and buyers tended to get rely on (aka cherry pick) information from national newspapers. A few days prior, another real estate agent gave me a similar viewpoint.
Logical, right?
I started to think about it a little further and it made more sense to me. Local publications tend to be more protective of their local turf in order to connect with their readers (positive) while national publications are more broad based and disconnected from local conditions (negative).
Nothing earthshattering here but it makes for a strong argument that everyone should be reading everything (including Matrix). 😉