Most of us reading this newspaper have a mortgage, own our home or want to buy one. So, when The Miami Herald writes about housing, it is affecting a major source of our net worth. As the value of our house goes, so goes the value of our savings, retirement and credit.
During the South Florida real-estate bubble of 2003-2007, some readers criticized the paper for being too much of a cheerleader, inflating the bubble. Cynics grumbled that The Miami Herald was in the pocket of realtors, who are major advertisers.
Today, with foreclosures rising, prices dropping and a flood of new condo units about to hit the market, the opposite is heard: The Miami Herald's coverage is too negative, stoking a crisis atmosphere that undermines the value of all homes; buyers are being scared away. ''Why does The Miami Herald seem to love reporting doom and gloom about South Florida's real-estate market?'' Sylvia Cherry of Coconut Grove wrote. What's the truth?
I have reviewed The Miami Herald's real-estate coverage over the past three months and talked with opposing experts, including realtors. It is hard to separate the coverage from the truth about the market. What I found was that many of the paper's real-estate stories have been excellent and fair, citing competing views. Realtors, understandably, are sensitive about negative articles, but there is no denying that there is a problem.
My complaint actually takes The Miami Herald into a riskier direction, but one that I think better serves us as readers if done right. Herald reporters and editors have been too scrupulous, in that they have been too timid. They have done the timely major stories and done them well, but they have not followed up with enough analysis or perspective of their own.
We need to better understand where the value of our homes is heading tomorrow -- as opposed to what it is today -- and how we might influence that. No coverage is more important to us than real estate, and The Miami Herald could be doing more than it is.
I have a bias as a former Wall Street Journal editor. To me, The Miami Herald is superb -- famous, actually -- for enterprise reporting on misdoings and for emotive features. It is less attentive, however, to business reporting that is less sexy but affects more of us.
The challenge is to write about dry matters such as mortgages, zoning and occupancy rates in an interesting, enterprising way -- every day. You won't find two more opposing views on the South Florida housing market than those of two of the leading analysts, Jack McCabe, of McCabe Research and Consulting, and Michael Y. Cannon, Executive Director of Integra Realty Resources/Miami.
McCabe is the pessimist and Cannon the optimist, but both agree that Herald reporting has been accurate and good. Their beef is with each other, and with opposing sources of statistics, such as the more upbeat National and Florida Association of Realtors and the downbeat Standard & Poor's/Case Shiller index.
Readers, for example, could gauge the two and their views for themselves when The Miami Herald had them face off in a cover story for the Business Monday section in October. In a more-recent front-page story three weeks ago, Home Prices up, down, depending on source, Herald reporters took an intelligent first cut at how different indexes measure different things.
What was missing in the articles and others citing the sources was an analysis of the strength and weakness of what each measures, and not just that they measure different things. The same goes for perspective comparing sectors in the market, such as new houses, used houses and condos, and in different price ranges.
I have read all of the coverage and am frankly confused except to say that unsold inventory is way up, asking prices are sharply lower, actual sales prices in each sector differ, and the condo sector is especially threatened, depending partly on neighborhood and project. But veteran realtors such as Ronald Shuffield, president of Esslinger-Wooten-Maxfield Realtors in Coral Gables, are correct in saying that while the median price of a home sold today is $350,000, down from $390,000 last spring, it still is more than double the $155,000 it was in 2002.
In other words, prices are rolling back, as they have every 10 years, but your home is still worth a lot more than it was five years ago. This is scant comfort if you bought more recently, or borrowed against your home at the higher value, or, worse, if you were unwise or suckered into any of a number of mortgage schemes that are about to hit you with higher rates.
And then there are all of those new condos in trouble or about to go on to the market. Is this, then, a market crash, as McCabe argues, and is it going to get worse? The state's own economists last week seemed to say so as they sent dire signals of what Florida's housing-dependent economy can expect in what appears to be a growing recession.
I don't know. But I wish The Miami Herald would help me make sense of it all so that we know what to do in our personal situations. I also wish it would help guide me on what to demand, if anything, of our local and national government. How do other communities avoid overbuilding and violent booms and busts in real estate, or is it better to just let the free market reign?
The Miami Herald has reported extensively and well about the dramatic issues of mortgage fraud and corruption in public housing. But what should the government do, if anything, about the middle class who might lose their homes in the vice of a correction or a crash? What are the options, their pros and cons?
Finally, there is the long-term perspective versus the short-term turmoil. The housing market will pick up again, you can bet on it.
The question is when. The bottom feeders already are moving in to buy distressed properties. There is only one shoreline, one South Florida, limited hinterland, and it is all becoming part of an international economy -- at a still relatively cheap price.
I would hope to see not just stories that deal with these issues directly, but with more of such perspective making it into everyday stories, giving them sense and context.
