"Scare tactics" keeping buyers out of the market?
OK, to put it another way, is the media to blame for keeping buyers on the sideline?
That's what the chief economist of the National Association of Home Builders appeared to be getting at during a panel discussion Friday evening on Fox Business Network.
"Basically, buyers are being misled by these scare tactics of big drops in individual (markets)," argued the NAHB's David Crowe in a "housing summit" led by anchor Gerri Willis.
Instead, buyers should be focused on the market in their town or neighborhood, he said.
"These are national indexes," Crowe responded, when asked by Willis of reports by housing market trackers like Case-Shiller of continued declines in home prices.
Certainly, the implosion of once booming housing markets in Las Vegas, Miami and other Sunbelt cities has dominated headlines.
And I'd argue all that bad news does have a cumulative toll, helping chip away at consumer confidence.
Yet there are legitimate reasons for buyers to be wary, even in markets like Greater Boston, where prices have fallen, but remain relatively high.
It all comes back to the jobs issue - whether you have one and, if so, how confident you are that you will still have it six months or a year from now.
That's an issue that cuts across housing markets and neighborhoods across the country, from Los Angeles to Boston.
And that has nothing to do with "scare tactics."
