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10 Mar

What I Really Think

Posted March 10th, 2006 | View Comments

Wow, there’s been a lot of angry people lately giving me grief over my post about the February Sacramento home sales numbers.

One fellow was good enough to give me grief in another post — hey, thanks for breaking up the monotony. :)

Two guys in a row didn’t get the difference between the median and the mean. I was lucky — I married a gal who took statistics in college, otherwise I wouldn’t know, either.

Tommy Hopkins, Builder of Sales Champions, used to talk about depression and the like as being in one’s psychological “danger zone”, and remarked that in sales we have the good fortune of being in a profession in which others use us to get out of their danger zones. I don’t know about that, but I do know that folks like to stop by and tell me how dishonest and so forth Realtors® are.

Hey, thanks for the input.

Sorry, was that in itself disingenuous?

On the other hand, those folks who I’ve been privileged to serve as clients and I get along quite well.

I think it would be awfully neat if I could do what others claim a blog is supposed to be good for — establishing oneself as an expert. It’d even be neater if this process would in turn translate into business. But it seems to me there’s quite a hefty disconnect between this forum, where I meet with folks who like talking about real estate in a polemic way, and the rest of my business, where I get to talk about real estate in a let’s go shopping or I need to get it sold way. Or at least, let’s be lookie-lous, which rises at least to the minimally civil standard of not leading off with insults.

Actually, as a Buddhist, I might say that here is where I work off my karma. (Or more precisely — given the tenor of some of these threads — create more of it!).

Frankly it’s a bit late to figure it all out.

  • dan

    hey john i teach at a local college, and the gripers here remind me of the students i teach who give me lousy, shrill reviews in online anonymous “rate your teacher” websites (despite my having award-winning marks from the real course evaluations).

    they’re usually the ones who bet they could pass without studying or showing up to class.

    kind of like thinking you can build up equity without buying a house.

    how’s that for a flame-starter?
    :)

  • John Lockwood

    Dan,

    Thanks so much for the support / kind words.

    As to whether it’s a flame starter or not, time will tell. There was nothing in this thread that cast the world or the real estate market in a positive or constructive light, so I’m not sure how attractive it’ll be to my critics. They might not even see it. Certainly there was no uproar about my using average sales figures until they went up.

    People want something to do. A bubble bursting is entertaining in the same way a car wreck is — one might get to glimpse some carnage. Prices adjusting and sales slowing in a non-catastrophic way is boring — it’s like having to actually show up to class to pass. I suspect that my news about the February numbers upset people because it threatened to upset a perfectly good bloodbath with the prospect of yet another slow news day.

    Perhaps I need to do some writing about short sales or foreclosures, lest I lose everyone but you.

  • http://exurbannation.blogspot.com Robert Coté

    Two guys in a row didn’t get the difference between the median and the mean.

    Who was the second guy to mistake median and mean? Dr. Math would be upset with your 1+0=2 arithmetic.

  • Peter

    Thanks for pointing out my mistake. In actuality, you kind of led me into it by posting different statistics from one post to the next to discuss the same subject (sale prices). I guess I should be careful when reading successive posts because they may not be consistent – kind of like the weather man switching from Fahrenheit to Celsius every other day. By the way, I am not rooting for a crash, just a return to sensibility. There are ongoing reductions all over the place and inventory figures are up as is the time on market. All these indicators should convince buyers to wait it out. If you want business, you should be encouraging buyers to see you about how to make low offers to desperate sellers. That is where we are and where the market is heading. I enjoy the posts. Thanks

  • http://exurbannation.blogspot.com Robert Coté

    the students i teach who give me lousy, shrill reviews in online anonymous “rate your teacher” websites … they’re usually the ones who bet they could pass without studying or showing up to class.

    Wow you can identify anonymous posters by tracking their classroom behavior and Mr. Lockwood can predict trends from an isolated data point. We may not have much in the way of hard data as to an actual bubble but we’ve got more than enough on the bubble denial crowd.

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