Written and authorised by...

All that's fit to print...

Housing Association Tasmania executive director Stuart Clues said it was the perfect time to buy a home.

"The net result for ordinary Tasmanians is that you're going to get a house built on time and on budget at the lowest interest rates we've seen. They'd be crazy not to go for it."

Mr Clues said the cuts should show all Tasmanians that there was no better time to escape the rental cycle or build an investment property.

Go on, you know you want to.

Guidance

Time is beautiful. Given enough time you can get fat, bald and start to sprout hair from your ears. Suffering those indignities is worth it because time also builds something else - an artillery. As Sun Tzu said, "while you sweat an imprint into your couch, your enemies sow the seeds of their destruction."

Predictions have been made and forgotten by most. Those without shame and something to sell can forever make those predictions without fear of second guessing. Welcome to Tasmania, where the print media is a contemptible landscape of irrelevant whiskey-nosed boozers and their fresh faced, empty headed underlings. You know the type, tweeting while watching Q&A on Monday night allows them to believe they're the state's intelligentsia.

Luckily there's me. Thoroughly lazy, yet occasionally motivated by the chance any of Tasmania's lamentable journalistic stock will rip me off and highlight something original.

The odds aren't good. The Mercury's pumped four positive real estate stories over the past week. With the latest came the revelation (from the most reliable REIT prez, Adrian Kelly) that first home buyers are the current market bright spot. Increasing as a percentage apparently. And you know the way this works - sales fall but one segment maintains its position, thus increases its percentage. Voila, they're on a comeback! They're not, check the ABS.

The Examiner managed to cut the fairy floss, but offered the following from Mr Kelly...

Institute president Adrian Kelly said low interest rates and affordable housing stock should be prompting people to invest in real estate, but without the economic confidence or job security people were reluctant to take the plunge.

Why would people be reluctant to invest in Tasmanian housing? Apart from the obvious economic woe and inevitable prospect of more to come, there's the fact Tasmanian full-time incomes increased by 55% over the ten years from 2002 to 2012, while the average mortgage bloated by 165% for first home buyers and 141% for the rest.

Then there's the hair whitening prospect of following anything Adrian Kelly says about real estate...

REIT president Adrian Kelly said yesterday the market had bottomed out - 3 May 2011

13 months later...

 RP Data-Rismarck (sic) recorded an 8.9 per cent fall in the median sale price - 5 June 2012

And never to be discouraged from a spruik, Kelly followed up with...

"Now is a fantastic time to buy," he said.

Imagine the noob home-buyer who bought on such an assurance and sometime later lost their job. Fortunately they'd always have a tight market to sell into so they could be assured of losing no more than their deposit and closing costs...

Tasmania's population grew by just 0.2 per cent (832 people) between June 30, 2011 and June 30, 2012

And the other piece of important data this week?

TASMANIAN home building approvals have slumped to their lowest levels in 12 years.
In March, just 108 new dwellings were approved, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Which sounds bad, but what were they for the 2011-12 financial year? 2099. That's right, Tasmania built 1267 more residential dwellings than people added to its population for the 2011-12 financial year. One for every 0.396 people added.

Not a new theme either, as I'd previously highlighted when I was a little more prolific, Tasmania had been building a new dwelling for about every 1.6 people added to the population over the last decade. These were the good old days the HIA pines for every time it calls for stimulus or bemoans the coldest state now has regulations about insulating new houses. The time when lime green XR8 utes prowled new Tasmanian subdivisions as Hotondo's finest were erected block upon vacant block.
 
Yet as population growth slows we're still covering green space with ever more blue-board and grey render. And at an unheard of ballistic level - a new dwelling for every 0.39 people added to the population! And not a question anywhere, just print what the HIA wants. Builders are lucky a few clueless miners are still building new palaces. Wait till that gravy train dries up.

How's it gonna end? Well we would have never seen it coming. Then we'll all suffer, as economic cripples argue on Facebook that it's the fault of the political party they despise. Itchy 63 year olds will still gear into property until the bitter end. Accountant said he should set up a SMSF, plus he saw a property opportunity. Let them do this.

A heads up would have been nice, but there's more important things to do #QANDA.

The Rush

All the legends of the game were quoted. Enzo, Larocca, Doc Wilson and ex Doc Yardney, Zheng, Zigomanis. Even Joye, before he became AFR's Tom Clancy. The themes were recurring and blunt, propelled by trouser tightening headlines and lustful quotes. Housing shortage; property reaching new heights; superannuation sucks (damn that asset class!); you need to provide for your retirement; the population is going bananas; and streets awash with renters offering bodily organs to live in your apartment.

The folder was prepared by "one of Australia's leading property investment companies". No mention where they sat on the modesty scale. After optimistic forecasts based on yesterday, zero attention to risk and 100% financing (using two banks), the real focus became the newspaper clippings featuring our experts. Then, the amateur psychology - indecision kills wealth building opportunities. Don't procrastinate, don't sit on your hands. Don't think this over. Just act now.

They did. And then they did their arse. It was Melbourne circa 2009 and how could you lose being a landlord when property had been on a rip for so long? The last seven years equals the next seven years, right? Come 2013, and a few years of subsidizing tenants had become onerous. Being closer to retirement than Warnie's latest hairpiece, they had to ask the question. The agent came back with an answer - 20% lower than what they paid, but lower offers should be accepted.

Ponder this in a week when the spruikers are back out in force and Terry Ryder got sand in his ladyparts because lazy journalists reported on Demographia's latest affordability survey. His beef? No alternative views offered (Tez wasn't called for a quote) in a story that gave buyers pause for thought. Tezza has long taken a dim view of spruiking, but in a year when he offers, "Why you should get busy investing in residential property in 2013" you understand why he's a little dark when Demographia's work basks in UV rays for a few hours.

If you're not clued in, that's modern media balance - one dude's press release without opposing views, then the other guy's press release without opposing views. The T-man can huff and puff all he likes, the dissenting voices when "property is going to the moon," are always absent. And we'll ignore who writes the script even when the data is negative. In Tasmania, the REIT gets to interpret the data for the local media, by dismissing it when it's bad and bathing in it when it's good.

No doubt Terry's got our best interests at heart, but his virtuous soapbox looks a little rickety when you start pulling out the arguments for examination and not just reaction... 

In some cases, it’s criminally negligent. Elderly people have lost their retirement savings because media misinformation led them towards disastrous investment decisions.

This is why the erosion of journalistic standards in the reporting of real estate is so serious. The financial commitment involved in a real estate purchase is huge, and consumers need good information to make sensible decisions.

In my perfect world, there would be a commission of inquiry and the people who wrote this garbage would be charged. Journalists have an obligation to the public to present information that is fair, accurate and balanced. Failure to do so should be a criminal offence.

Fists shaking in agreement, until I noticed some of Terry's one way traffic for Property Observer...

Even builders are bullish that 2013 will be a good year for property

Glenn Stevens is right – there will not be an Australian property crash, as there is no bubble

Enough with doom and gloom, or why you should feel confident about the 2013 property market

It’s time to stop procrastinating and get into the real estate market

Why you should get busy investing in residential property in 2013

And this launches no further back in time than December 2012. Fair? Accurate? Balanced? All are a content dead zone. Some meandering fluff and all guilty of telling one side of the story. Not that I wouldn't be in the dock for similarly one-sided offences, but if that's T-man's perfect world, allocate me my soap on a rope and I'll do the time. Others faced with incarceration would argue opinion is opinion - or expert opinion.

In a property spruiker's marketing folder there's little difference.Whether the T-man likes it or not, some slippery eel out there has probably already printed those 2013 bullish predictions and appropriated them for whatever he's selling - property is back, don't think, just buy.

Sure, Terry's got a business to run and he can't giveaway all his good analysis for free, but some of his free stuff - the stuff he uses to raise his profile - is the exact "don't wait, act now" garbage he laments others produce. The same stable floor muck that halts reasoned reflection in the naive.

The real knee slapper? And the moment you start wondering if Crikey read his thunderings before giving them a reprint? The call for an inquiry and criminal charges for non compliance - for who? Yeah, the other guys. Ignoring the dire need for regulation in his own industry while shifting the focus to the someone else's. They need to have an inquiry. They need to be charged. Oh yeah, amazingly ballsy stuff. People are doing their arse in property, but the regulatory focus should be on the media? Crikey fell for it and it sounds like Jonathon Holmes over at Media Watch will be co-opted into preaching from the same playbook.

Real estate journalism has always been an area of ill-repute and while I'm always happy to crossbow them, they're only the lazy messenger for a cowboy industry with minimal regulation. AFSL? Huh. ACL? Maybe. Statement of advice, reasonable basis for that advice, a risk profile even? Nope, here's a folder with scant regard for your circumstances, but plenty of reasons on why you should feel positive this year and here's all the old classics on why property is a no lose deal. Remember, indecision only delays your path to riches.  Don't delay borrowing mid six figures, no matter where you are in life. Oh and here's the five figure charge for our service. This is where people really smoke their retirement.

The shame is, T-man is capable of so much better, yet he's foaming about lazy journalists. That's my job, T-man, I'm the guy blogging in his underpants (literally). You're the guy wearing the suit. Go speak to power about the right industry. The cleaner property is, the cleaner it gets reported.

Protection

When a newspaper croaks, a loyal and important servant to its community is lost. Or that's what the obituaries say. The truth is, a dead newspaper scarcely bears any resemblance to the mythical beast that will be lionised when the printing presses shut down and the plastic bag full of paper and ink stops landing on lawns each morning.

The Advocate, its death assured as a marsupial on a Tasmanian road at dusk, will be one of those lionised newspapers. It shouldn't be. The Advocate's turf is one of Australia's most economically disadvantaged electorates, something that goes hand in hand with low education levels. It's almost assured when The Advocate recycles a press release or culls stats to craft a story, the readership won't find themselves digging any deeper. Forget them trawling ABS spreadsheets for reality. 

Sean Ford, senior journalist amongst a bunch of 12 year olds, knows this. He's The Advocate's "resident numbers man" (yep, that's what they call him) a title afforded to the sole person on staff who's bookmarked the ABS website. Sean Ford goes on holiday - no ABS stories. He's the man who'd write stories off the back of Deanne Lamprey's claims of "investors circling" and "housing shortages", all while sales crumbled to 20 year lows and listings went kaboom.

As the new talent in falling house price stories for The Examiner, Deanne still speaks real estate speak, just now in more measured tones. That kind of story wouldn't fly at The Advocate, with its current determination to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative and not disappoint Mr Real Estate. Why else would Sean, despite evidence everywhere that Tasmanian real estate is still going nowhere fast, be desperately spruiking with both hands.

Yesterday Mr Ford wowed the local readership with the news:

TASMANIA'S real estate market is continuing to strengthen and first homebuyers are returning to the scene.

There were 801 lending finance commitments to buy housing for owner  occupation  in the state in November in original terms, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

This is fine and dandy - if you regularly use original terms as your gauge. Yet someone can't quite decide the appropriate way to measure housing finance. So how about just using the one that gives consecutive increases...

TASMANIA'S real estate sector is continuing to strengthen.

Loans for owner occupied housing grew for a seventh successive month in trend terms in October, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

And in September...

Finance commitments for owner occupation climbed by 18 to 793 in September in trend terms, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

It was a sixth successive increase, from a 21-year low of 697 in March.

See trend terms are great until they no longer suit the narrative you're going with. In November they actually fell by four, putting on ice the "eighth successive increase" story Sean was ready to go with. So how else to keep the story positive? Switch to original and include a disclaimer further down the page, The Advocate usually uses trend figures, but is using original numbers here because more original data is available for housing finance. Why not report the way you usually do? Not that original hasn't been used in the past...

August housing finance commitments to buy established dwellings for owner occupation were up by 42  to 689 in original terms, according to new Australian Bureau of Statistics figures.

They just haven't been used correctly. Original terms for August 2012 were actually 773 with an increase of 43. Go figure. Who knows where that stat came from.

What gets lost in this spruiktacular story of first home buyer returns and positive leads written with rarely used stats is the data still sucks. In original terms, here's "Tasmania's strengthening real estate market" against the rest of the century.

Another weightbearing, yet termite infested plank of this argument, is the return of the first home buyer.

TASMANIA'S real estate market is continuing to strengthen and first homebuyers are returning to the scene.

First homebuyers are trending upwards and were at 125 in November.

That was down five on October and level with September, but all those months were significantly stronger than the 83 recorded in March and 76 in April.

It might be my unrelenting bias, but I don't see a period so poor since the ABS started measuring housing finance for first home buyers in Tasmania. Bumping off all time lows to get back to barely above decade lows is not worth crowing about. It's not even worth chirping about. It's not even a story. 

Now what's the end result of all this data polishing? Could it be eliciting positive sentiment from those who aren't going to read past the headline and run straight out to organise their finance?

Anyone who needs to read this won't and anyone who reads this doesn't need to. That's the reality. A Fairfax regional owing its existence to being jumpstarted each week by the Domain lift out. Could anyone really expect better?

Nope.

Patterns

What's a Real Estate Institute president to do? A 20 year low in house sales, housing finance regressing nearly as far, and prices showing the worst falls in the country. What's the solution to such a problem when your members are leaving the industry and queuing up to sell flat screens again? Distraction! Talk the unquantifiable data outside the date range of the stinky figures you've just released, of course. 

Dealing with an inattentive media is always a bonus. They don't ask questions, just repeat your choice quotes.  Sometimes dealing with such sleepwalkers can be frustrating, being so desperate to write their own nonsense angle they can derail your own narrative, as The Mercury's Meryl Naidoo proves when referencing figures from the September quarter...

INTEREST rate cuts have failed to rally homebuyers in Tasmania as sales plummeted across the state.

Now I had to take my socks off to do it, but I think the September quarter ends at the end of, well, September. And that interest cut(s) I believe it happened in November. November comes after September, I think. Hang on I'll check my toes again.

But onto REIT prez, Adrian, or for the purposes of coolness, A Kelly...  

...he predicted the figures would improve in the next quarter.

"Most Tasmanian agents are now reporting a substantial increase in sales over the past six to eight weeks and we expect this trend to continue into the new year," he said.

Impossible to fault the man for his game. It's the end of November and we're getting September quarter figures from the REIT now. The December quarter doesn't end until the end of, hang on socks off again, yep, December. And when will the REIT pop off with those figures - late February 2012.

Even with a non alcoholic festive season, I'd be hard pressed to remember anything I read back on November 29, 2011. But being pathological, I'll seemingly hunt these things down again and again and again.

So what was A Kelly saying back in early September when he felt the need to correct some scary sounding RP Data stats...

"From what I have seen and from speaking to our members, there has been an increase in sales and buyer activity over the last three to four weeks," he said.

"So the RP Data figures do not paint an accurate picture of what is happening here."

Sounds pretty exciting. It really sets the mood, that September quarter must be a hot piece of action. I can't wait to pull the panties off this hot little number, when she's ready, of course.

Market data released yesterday by the Real Estate Institute of Tasmania...

She's ready, so let's start loosening that belt...

shows there was a 3.2 per cent reduction in house sales for the September quarter on the previous quarter and a 4.8 per cent drop in sales for the year.

Oh it's a dude!

Institute president Adrian Kelly said the median house price had fallen 3.2 per cent to $295,100 for the quarter.

And it's got really hairy balls!

I don't know who I should be most disappointed in, myself? I'm back for one blog post and I've already resorted to a tranny joke. Certainly not A Kelly, asking a real estate agent not to spruik is akin to asking a chimpanzee not to throw faecal matter in your direction. Meryl Naidoo and The Mercury should be the recipients of any and all Sandilands like fury here.

Not understanding November comes after September, that can be forgiven. Some kid at the local primary school can show you what a calendar is. But to continue giving the REIT unfettered access to a wide audience to trumpet their horse shit stories only shows you up as a bunch of lazy buffoons. It takes five seconds to type Adrian Kelly into The Mercury's search function and even less time to find and click on the last time he talked about how awesome his unquantifiable past few weeks were.

Any chance you could read his quotes back to him? Maybe ask how his released figures never reached the zenith of the awesomeness he predicted back in the middle of that quarter?

There's always February.