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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: patron_anejo_por_favor who wrote (42315)	9/29/2005 8:52:12 PM
From: Mick Mørmøny	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

Bloggers attaining celebrity for housing-bubble punditry By Mike Freeman UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER September 29, 2005 For Rich Toscano, the most surreal moment in his tenure as housing-bubble blogger came when a Money magazine reporter called to discuss the San Diego market. "He said, 'I just got off the phone with (Nobel Prize-winning economist) Milton Friedman. He wasn't too helpful. Now I'm calling you,' " Toscano recalled. Toscano, a renter in University Heights, wasn't quoted in the Money article. Neither was Friedman. But the fact that he was interviewed highlights how blogs – short for Web logs – have been gaining a voice in the housing-bubble debate. Blogs, personal musings posted on the Web on a particular topic, have emerged as a cultural phenomenon during the past couple of years. More than 15 million populate the Internet, according to Cincinnati-based Intelliseek, which monitors blog traffic. Bloggers were the first to question a CBS report on President Bush's National Guard service. And a 23-year-old Notre Dame law student with no meteorological training became a cyber sensation last month by posting an eeriely accurate warning of Hurricane Katrina's threat to New Orleans three days before the hurricane struck. While traffic on housing-bubble blogs is difficult to determine, experts think it has been on the rise thanks to the scorching housing market. "Bloggers tend to be a lot more attuned to the details and often serve as contrarians," said Pete Blackwell, chief marketing officer with Intelliseek. "So I would not be surprised at all if there's a growing community of (housing-bubble) bloggers." Toscano's blog centers on his Web-based alter ego – Professor Piggington – a Ben Franklin-esque scientist who makes a statistical case for why San Diego's housing market is overvalued. The blog led to an invitation from San Diego real estate consultant Gary London for Toscano to speak to his research staff. And HomeFed chairman Joseph Steinberg, developer of San Elijo Hills in San Marcos, directed shareholders to Toscano's Piggington.com Web site piggington.com for "one man's opinion of the excesses of our local San Diego market." All of which bemuses Toscano, 34, whose day job is at a high-tech outsourcing firm. "It was for my buddies," he said of the Web site. "I never really intended for other people to look at it." But Toscano's Professor Piggington has struck a chord with Web surfers trying to understand why housing prices here have soared. "I couldn't find any good information so I just started running the numbers myself," he said. "I was kind of appalled by what I found. I really didn't see any fundamental underpinnings for the prices we were experiencing." The site combines statistics with acerbic commentary. The tongue-in-cheek motto is "In God We Trust. Everyone Else Bring Data." Using statistics from La Jolla-based DataQuick, newsletters and a host of other sources, Toscano tries to debunk conventional wisdom as to why housing prices have soared. Gary London, owner of San Diego real estate consulting firm The London Group, met with Toscano after being impressed with the depth of his analysis. "He does a lot of substantive research, and he kind of caught on because he was one of the guys who didn't have the go-go attitude of the Association of Realtors," London said. But statistics alone don't tell the story of why people buy homes, London contends. "Rich understands the numbers, but he doesn't understand the role psychology plays in housing," London said. "That's where guys like Rich miss it." Another popular housing-bubble blog for San Diegans is Ben Jones' The Housing Bubble 2 (www.thehousingbubble2.blogspot.com.) thehousingbubble2.blogspot.com A freelance writer in Sedona, Ariz., Jones began the blog about a year ago. During one particularly volatile day this summer his site got more than 20,000 visitors. Jones thinks San Diegans follow his blog because the local housing market is slowing. "It seems like San Diego is a little farther along in the (housing) cycle, and so folks are a little more nervous," he said. San Diego's median home prices last month rose only 2.1 percent, according to DataQuick. That the lowest appreciation rate in six years. Toscano gave Jones some advice when he was starting his blog, and the two still trade e-mail from time to time, Jones said. A link on Jones' site directs Web surfers to Professor Piggington. Toscano's Web site gets about 500 unique hits a day, and he recently began charging a subscription fee for some content. "But the important stuff to me is all the background stuff – why there's a bubble – and I'm keeping all that free," he said. Even though he believes subscriptions are paying his expenses, Toscano doesn't anticipate quitting his day job to work full time on Professor Piggington. "This is really a hobby," he said. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mike Freeman: (760) 476-8209; mike.freeman@uniontrib.com signonsandiego.com