Extra, Extra: Negative Press Sinking Housing Market?
As Toll Brothers prepares to take a write-down of between $250 million and $450 million for the quarter that ended October 31, the luxury home builder’s chief executive says the media is aiding and abetting the national housing market meltdown. Perhaps as the presidential campaign heats up and moves to the front page, negative articles…
As Toll Brothers prepares to take a write-down of between $250 million and $450 million for the quarter that ended October 31, the luxury home builder’s chief executive says the media is aiding and abetting the national housing market meltdown. Perhaps as the presidential campaign heats up and moves to the front page, negative articles about housing will move off the front page, said Robert Toll. Then, hopefully, the positive underpinnings of low interest rates, low unemployment and a decent economy will raise new-home-buyer confidence. Toll also gave out letter grades for the markets it operates in and found the New York City area is performing better than just about anywhere else in the country: The company’s city living projects in suburban New York and New Jersey got grades of B or B-plus, while the majority of Toll’s markets got grades of F or F-minus.
Blame for Poor Home Sales? It’s the Press, a Builder Says [NY Times]
Photo by Neubie
if it wasn’t for those meddling bloggers toll would have gotten away with it
this is great news
bitter renter
Toll Brothers weren’t blaming the media 2 years ago during the buying frenzy when we were all being told to “buy now – prices are going up”
FSRG: How many times has the media covered the ‘upside’? I remember when CNN.com had a feature on its homepage called ‘bubblewatch’ — that was four years ago. It would be an interesting exercise for Mr. B (if he has the time, of course) to go back and look at the articles referenced on Brownstoner.com. I’m sure the articles are lopsidedly negative. The ‘experts’ have been predicting the downfall of the NYC real estate market for the last 10 years. They’re bound to be right eventually, but it would be refreshing for some of them to admit they were wrong.
The guy is 100% right, truly – but he wasn’t complaining when the media was hyping up housing on the upside.
So unless Robert Toll is prepared to return some of his profits to those people who bought his product at the peak (and are now standing on large losses), he really ought to shut up.
FSRG
Atlantic Yards will not only ruin Brooklyn, it will ruin all of New York, and indeed, as 9:30 suggests, the whole of these United States. Forget Iraq or terrorism, what will bring this country down is a mega-mixed-use development in the middle of Brooklyn. I don’t know why the presidential candidates aren’t speaking to this.
And by the way, The What is just speaking the truth and the press are along for the ride.
I think the problem isn’t the press so much as it’s the What and the fact that people are starting to wise up to the nationwide effect of Atlantic Yards.
Yeah–if we all keep quiet no one will notice 🙂
there is some truth to his argument…the media whores overhype EVERYTHING
Blame the messenger–LOL