The (Always) Sunny Side of the Street
No matter the market conditions, real estate agents say "Buy now!" Their profits may rise, but not their stature.
Real estate agents are people who believe in the power of believing. They think drops in housing prices are caused in large part by negative thinking. They have confidence that downturns end when people have confidence again. They would like us, the grouchy media, to share with you, the reluctant public, two words of instruction: Buy now.
The National Association of Realtors? "This is the best market in years in terms of choice," said a recent radio ad.
The Northeast Association of Realtors? "It's a great time to be a home buyer in 2008."
The Massachusetts Association of Realtors? It's a "buyer's market."
Behold the eternal, unbearable optimism of real estate agents.
Listen, 2002 was a great time to buy. You could have bought a condemned triple-decker in Boston's least popular neighborhood and doubled your money in two years. Without spending a penny on improvements. 1997 was a great time to buy. You could have bought a home in the western suburbs for half the current price.
Now is not a great time to buy. Most housing analysts believe that prices will keep falling through 2008. Some people have reasons to buy now, and that's fine, particularly if they're planning to settle down for a while. I bought a condo last fall. But buying now is a choice you should make despite the condition of the market, not because of it.
In addition to being optimistic during the great years of 1997 and 2002, real estate agents were upbeat during the downturn in the early 1990s. And they were hopeful last year. The chief economist of the National Association of Realtors opened 2007 by announcing that the market had reached bottom in 2006. Instead, the median price of a single-family home dropped last year for the first time since record keeping started four decades ago and likely for the first time since the Great Depression.
We all learn at some point how to translate the things that real estate agents say. "Charming!" (Last renovated during the Curley administration.) "Convenient!" (Everything you need can be reached through the interstate highway system.) "Cozy!" (Leave your furniture with the Salvation Army.)
But the relentless optimism about the market is harder to translate. You can't simply assume the negative. As the saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Sometimes the market is good. And that's what makes the optimism unbearable. Here are the people who pay attention to home prices while we're not looking. We wander back every once in a while to ask how it's going. And the answer is always the same. It's as if the old Hancock Building beamed only a single signal: steady blue, clear view!
Here in New England, where clear skies are a sometimes thing, where sports teams lose when they should win, where the Puritan belief in suffering outlives the Puritans, this feels wrong.
Something there is that doesn't love an optimist, to adapt a phrase by Robert Frost.
How can you trust real estate agents when they can't seem to tell the difference between the hard times and the good? No doubt many agents truly believe every tomorrow will be brighter than every today. Sales work attracts optimists as surely as newsrooms attract curmudgeons. But there is a reason that agents aren't called real estate salespeople - they are pledged to be honest. And sometimes that requires a note of caution.
I write often about people facing foreclosure. With some regularity, real estate agents write me to ask if the people used an agent to buy the home. The answer usually is yes. Real estate agents in recent years helped many people buy homes they could not afford.
I don't hear agents talking about this or chewing on the consequences. Instead, I hear that the good times will return again if home buyers will just . . . buy . . . homes.
Perhaps I'm listening in the wrong places. Perhaps somewhere sits a real estate agent slumped in a chair, hands around coffee, saying, "Listen, that home is too expensive. The market is really bad. I think you should wait."
Nah. I'm probably just being optimistic.
Binyamin Appelbaum covers residential real estate for the Globe. Send comments to magazine@globe.com. 