Listen to Frontburner. They're Smart.

The DMN's Steve Brown strikes yet again perpetuating national real estate doom and gloom. "U.S. home sales will hit 5-year low in 2007", ugh. That may be true but how does that apply to Dallas/Ft. Worth? Oh, that's right, it doesn't. Brown even writes "[Housing analyst, John Tucillo,] agreed that market conditions vary dramatically by city.” Brown obviously disagrees with this assessment. I mean, is he trying to give Jim Schutze over at the Observer a run for his money by being such a muckraker? Publisher and editor of D Magazine, Wick Allison, takes Brown and the DMN editors to task on Frontburner for his incessant prattlings about how the real estate boat is sinking faster than the Titanic. (A big thanks to Frontburner and Wick for linking to my blog post about how Dallas/ Ft. Worth real estate is on track to have the 2nd best year in real estate sales ever.) And then I stumble upon this article by Brown that reluctantly tries to take a positive spin on our local market using many of the same statements and stats from the doom and gloom article referenced earlier. I think I can actually feel him squirming as he lifts his pen to write something positive about our local real estate market. He references how Realtors have largely blamed the media for our real estate woes but quickly gets his revenge by ending the article with a nice jab by making sure Realtors take part of the blame as well. I don't know Steve Brown personally but I'm not sure where all this negativity is stemming from? I mean seriously, did you have a bad real estate experience back in the day? What I do know about Steve Brown is that when you drive by his East Dallas home it looks like his yard hasn't been trimmed in ages and is literally trying to eat his house. Honestly. The fence is leaning, the trees haven't been trimmed since 'Nam and forget about actually using the detached garage as, well, a garage. I'm not saying this to be (completely) vindictive but our Dallas/Ft. Worth real estate columnist is responsible for swaying our city's opinions and has a honest-to-goodness “tear down” that looks as though it is uninhabitable and certainly not up to city code by a long shot. The irony of this is not lost on me. So my challenge to Mr. Brown would be to either 1. Start talking about LOCAL real estate issues and numbers or at least put our market into perspective with California and Vegas; or 2. Clean up your yard and maintain your house. Because why should we listen to what you say about real estate when you can’t even take care of your own.