The county recorders office was caught off guard in June and wasn't prepared to record 1101 sales. It took a little longer for everyone to get all the information in and recorded but now near the end of July we have a final number of 1101 homes sold in Salt Lake County in the month of June.
Pulling numbers:
I went back to re pull numbers because of a disturbing article I found in the Real Estate section of CNN money. This article was speculating on the expected drop in median home price in 75 of the 100 largest cities. Obviously I looked down the list to find Salt Lake City as we have been tracking the growth of the sales price. To my surprise I saw Salt Lake City expected to lose 9.8% of it's value on median home price. A 9.8% drop in the median home price in one year is completely unheard of in Salt Lake City and I can't find a year where that has happened. One article prior on the same web site shows a first quarter median home sales price INCREASE of 3.5% listing the median home sales price in Salt Lake City at $225,700. The article that shows the decline between now and may of 2009 shows our median home price at $229,000, published may 8th 2008, which would mean by a little over 1 month into the second quarter we were showing another 1.5% increase. Bringing the total increase in 4 months to 5% by their own reporting. How can someone report a 5% increase in the first part of 2008 to a 9.8% drop by May of 2009, in my opinion based solely on speculation and mere guessing, with a straight face?
Anyone that has done any serious tracking of Salt Lake City's home market can see that there has not been a single month since 1995 that our home sales price has dropped by more than 2 or 3% and furthermore will not find a year with an average home sales price drop.
The reason I investigate these articles is because I track the numbers very close for Salt Lake County and report and source them right here in this blog. When I see this kind of malicious speculation by a well known source it is easy to pick out the manipulation of the article. $229,000 is a healthy median home price for Salt Lake City. The average home sales price in Salt Lake County for June of 2008 was $278,042 as reported by the Wasatch Front Regional Multiple Listing Service. This is higher than reported in 159 of the last 162 months.
This is not an attempt to slander anyone:
I am not trying to put down the credibility of any organization. I am simply calling for a large scale public awareness to common media manipulation. The thought pattern that "if it's on the internet it must be true", has become a reality. The kind of reporting that I have seen over the last 12 months has been malicious and dangerous and this is simply a call to action for all of us to question the corporations that have better ratings when the news is bad. If you would like a copy of the statistics from the Wasatch Front Multiple Listing Service please e-mail me.
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