I loved Floyd Norris’ recent post What’s in a Slogan? [NYT] about slogans. It hits close to home as my extended family is being directly affected by the [Ford Motor Company](https://millersamuel.com)’s slump through layoffs, benefit cuts and falling housing prices in Michigan.

It’s unfortunate that the current Bush administration selected the [New Way Forward](http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/12/20/bush_war/index_np.html) slogan similar to the [Way Forward](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_Forward) selected by [Ford](http://www.ford.com) last year. There has to be some sort of Freudian meaning here by comparing the new direction in Iraq with the last gasp effort of an auto company leveraged to the hilt. A disconnect from reality perhaps? The administration characterizes the additional troops as a surge, suggesting a temporary increase while House democratic leaders characterize the increase as an escalation suggesting we are merely digging a deeper hole.

Ok, this isn’t a post about cars and politics. It’s about real estate t-shirt slogans.

Lately within my public appearances, I have found myself stumbling a bit with assigning a slogan to the current housing market. In Manhattan, its the Housing Rebound but that doesn’t work for other parts of the country. I have been characterizing the current market as Post-Housing Boom and Period of Transition After The Extended Housing Boom but they aren’t too catchy.

I got so used to the [NAR](http://www.realtor.com) assigning a slogan to each distinct housing period over these past few years that I feel somewhat lost without one now [wink].

Where is NAR now on this important issue? We demand an overly simplistic characterization of the market immediately.

After all, the Housing Boom slogan was beat into us until we were senseless and even now we are still groggy. There have been a bunch of variations on that slogan which proved to be largely inaccurate for their severity, and which frankly, I am completely sick of talking about. Ok, I am exaggerating a bit.

I guess the need for simplicity reigns in an industry that spews more data (bad and good) at consumers than they can process, piled on by flawed or significantly biased interpretation from positions of authority.

So my New Way Forward Surging Escalation Housing Market initiative is to come up with a new slogan soon before we go on to the next market period.