The leadership of the National Association of Realtors has complained for some time that the media is distorting the news about housing. Now the trade organization is doing something atypical -- directly reaching out to consumers with little-known facts about housing.

The NAR's new website -- housingmarketfacts.com -- is designed to give homebuyers and sellers information that illustrates the value of real estate as a long-term investment.

Why do you need to be told the obvious?

The NAR spends over $40 million annually on public service messages, but the news media typically turns a deaf ear. Real estate is local, but the media would have you believe that the losses of Detroit and San Diego are your losses, too.

The media sees NAR as self-serving, and never gives the Realtors credit for supporting and protecting many of the homeownership benefits that consumers enjoy today. For example, every year, someone in Congress proposes doing away with the mortgage interest rate deduction as a tax benefit, and every year NAR lobbyists battle back.

"If it bleeds, it leads" is a journalism axiom that applies to housing, too. Stories about mortgage fraud, foreclosures and crashing markets have far outpaced the good news -- that owning a home is one of the most reliable ways to build wealth for most people.

Here are some little known facts:

• For the past 30 years, the median price of existing homes has increased an average of more than 6 percent every year, and home values nearly double every 10 years.

• Home prices typically beat inflation by one or two percentage points.

• Housing sales in 2007 are expected to be the fifth-best on record.

While NAR expects a 1.9 percent decrease in housing prices, that's hardly the sickening slump the press makes it out to be.

If the national median home price is about $217,000, a 1.9 percent decrease would make it worth about $212,877, on a national scale. That's $4,123, or about the same annual hit you just took on your SUV.

If you've owned your home for only a year, you've got reason to be upset. But if you've owned your home for 10 years, as most buyers do, you've accumulated $108,500 in capital gains, which are non-taxable under $250,000 thanks in large part to NAR lobbyists. Take away the 4,123, and you're still $104,377 ahead!

So if your Chevy Tahoe doesn't have your panties in a twist, housing shouldn't either. Especially when it's expected to go up 3.1 percent in 2009, which I guarantee, your SUV won't do.

Published: January 17, 2008

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