Jackson Jambalaya

I saw that, too. I have not had the opportunity to crunch the numbers for myself, either. Thanks, Kingfish, you just saved me some time and money debunked the C-L.

In a normal housing market, a year would be an acceptable measure.
Given the state of the housing market and it's role in the economic recession, one would EXPECT decline to continue the past year.
You want to look at the rate of decline. Has it slowed? Have there been increases in consecutive months? Is it less than predicted/expected?

Also, typically houses go on the market in the spring in hopes of a sale and closing before school starts in Sept. To compare this year to last without those months included misses an important set of indicators.

To gage market movement, you must also account for those houses which have been on the market and didn't sell back when the market was strong and are either relisted or never removed from the list. There are some houses and neighborhoods in this community that are consistently depressed.

I can't know which of you is right from the data presented. But, I do know those in various real estate sales related jobs in this market who say their work is picking up.

Good catch KF. THis is exactly what we don't need. However, I will say that locally we are seeing some "retail" sales begin in South Jackson which up unitl now had been non existent. I hope that shows some stabilization in that area.

Another major factor in April sales - here and nationwide - was that the federal tax credit benefits from home purchases expired at the end of April. Home sales were up everywhere for the month of April. Mr. Dearman conveniently omits that fact from his 'analysis'

I am an Appraiser an most of my work now is foreclosure work. Realtors try to put a good spin on their proffession and sometimes say things that just are not so! This market will NOT begin to turn around till mid to late 2011 per the experts I follow and I tend to agree. A fellow appraiser/Jackson realtor president was speaking a year or so ago telling anyone who would listen that the market was beginning to turn around....REALLY? He had no idea of what he was talking about as my business was turning more to banks and foreclosures and less on sales and re-finances. The market is still bad and if you dont believe it have your house appraised!!!! Just saying.....

You wrote:

"The market is still bad and if you dont believe it have your house appraised!!!!"

Meaning that expectations for value should be adjusted downwards due to the soft market?

AHHHAAHHAA

They're selling and the K.F. isn't buying.

AHAHAHAHAHAHA

I'm not buying either.

I'm not making fun of those whose livelihoods and financial futures have been hurt by this housing collapse, but happy talk like this is just trolling for more victims.

HOW MANY OF THESE SALES WERE 3% DOWN, AND NONE OF IT ACTUALLY FROM THE BUYER? TAXPAYERS OF THE USA THE ACTUAL LENDER OF LAST RESORT LENDER?

A few minor details left out from this conference where major advertisers are allowed their 'input' to what poses as opinion, but is actually what the paper passes along as news content.

Perhaps the editorial board just decided to call up the area realtors and ask them WASSUP DUDE?

Or perhaps the realtors called someone on the editorial board, or management (or both) and this is what they come up with.

LAAAAAME.

There's little, if any, journalistic integrity anymore. The local real estate industry is probably the highest single source of advertising revenue for the CL; and they will publish just about anything the r/e folks want printed. I'd put my money on the info from the appraiser any day over a CL puff piece.

How is this dork writing a RE blog? Principles of RE taught me January is the WORST month for home sales. They should've asked me to write the blog...hell, at least I have a major in RE.

4:48 YOU MAKE THE POINT! C-L has not idea what's going on, this was advertiser drive info.

Ad Director, Publisher, Editor you should see the way they will
contort their bodies for a $

There will be little disagreement that David Hampton is a whore.

Are you sure they were trying to spin it or just stupid?

Did anyone else notice they have a sports columnist blogging about the two executions this week? Unbelievable.

I don't know how he is as a sportswriter but they don't seem to be overlapping skills sets IMHO ;-)
He helped us to his opinion re the death penalty (aside - who cares?) based on (and I'm paraphrasing here) "many well-documented cases of innocent people being put to death". AFAIK there hasn't been a single proven case of this but why pester him by asking for trivia like names, facts, evidence, etc.

The C-L is beyond a joke. Fortunately we have JJ for local news and these intertubes to keep us connected with the world at large.

My favorite part of the death penalty thingy from the paper was that they advanced the idea of racial disparity and showed the two white guys that were executed. The third was another white guy on death row for a third of a century.

I am about to actually look into the racial claims regarding execution that all these folks make.

I would've preferred Dick Vitale.

Can you imagine the narrative if Vitale or even Berman covered an execution? LMAO