If It Bleeds It Leads - The Death of Bad News?

In the media business there is an expression: "If it bleeds it leads."  Basically, audiences are captivated by bad news.  Perhaps I have some bad news for the bad news.

For the better part of 2006, the real estate blogosphere (it was not my new year's resolution to stop using the term) has been hijacked by those discussing the 'housing bubble'.  I'm not going to analyze this significance other than to note that the phenomenon was responsible for a large part of the traffic generated in our community.

BlogTopSites (somewhat of an authority for blog community traffic ranking among its participants) consistently lists HousingPanic (a housing bubble blog) as the most visited real estate blog in its ranking system, by a large margin.  Two other 'bubble blogs',HousingDoom and PaperMoney round out the top 10, and there are at least another 5 doomsday offerings in the top 40.
Not everyone has been buying in to the fear mongering and the "chicken-little'ing" and it seems, at least in the small data sample Technorati graph to the left, that the buzz is finally waning.

Today, the term "housing bubble'" is being mentioned at a rate of about 40 times per day on the blogosphere, whereas at its peak in August 2006, it was up to 180 mentions.  Is this a sign that the 'bubble' is in decline, the 'bubble talk' is in decline, the quantity of 'bubble blogs' is in decline, all of the above, or just some silly data I pulled?  Whatever the case, it can't be denied that the bad news blogs have gained an audience here in the real estate blogosphere, and although may suffer traffic decline in the event of an imminent real estate upswing, are probably here to stay.

On a barely related side note, there is strategy to be learned here.  Tragic news will bring eyeballs to your site.  Earlier this week, new blogger Marc Brinitzer of LendingClarity.com penned a piece titled: Mortgage Horror Story of the Week: Ripped off by Daughter’s Boyfriend.  This article ended up on social bookmarking site Reddit and attracted a surge of traffic that tipped the scales at nearly 400 unique visits that day. This was an example of leveraging bad news and a great headline.  Well done.

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Comments

[Imnotadoctor]

You can even check out search trends for "Housing Bubble"

Peaking in the summer of 2005.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=housing+bubble

There you go Jim!

[Jonathan Dalton]

Very nice, Jim ... now if the bubble bloggers would only continue following the trend and fade away.

[Kevin Orak]

So right . . enough negativity. (New to blogging and in particular your blog community). Have enjoyed being a passive participant up until now!

[Ines Hegedus-Garcia]

Great news about the real estate market - and absolutely a different perspective on getting real blog attention. I love your studies.

[Roberta Murphy]

Jim: More than anything, the bubble blah-blah's have run the subject into its grave. Readers like fresh blood.

[Gena Riede]

Glad to see the "bubble" has popped in the blogosphere...it's unfortunate that we are a society that relishes bad news but it seems that the days of "Father's Knows Best" is over and we are now a group of heightened "bottle neckers" who seem to be more intrigued with ignominious behavior.

[ccohen]

One of the home builders had a post on 'buyer urgency' on AR, and he was visited by some of the 'bubblers' last evening. I was shocked at their vitriolic comments. So I am encouraged to see that people are (maybe) realizing that life isn't as bad as the chicken little media claims?

[Jim Cronin]

I think that Roberta hit the nail on the head best when she points out that the topic has perhaps run its course... and we now need some new blood.

[Marty Van Diest]

Jim, I thought you were going to say "If it bleeds, it leaves".

We have to remember that people still need places to live. Most people would rather own than rent even it's just for the freedom to do what they want in their own home. So there is still a market for sellers and buyers and still work for Realtors.

[Terrill...ific!]

All I know is my market is really heating up here in Austin, TX. It's true other areas are suffering from what I hear but not here. We're up over 7% in 2006 and I'm blogging about it as often as I can. The only bad news I can report is how much some our market gets hyped too much like in the downtown austin condo market.

[Jay McGillicuddy]

When I was president-elect of the New Hampshire Association of REALTORS in 2003 the press was hounding me about the housing bubble in the fall of '03. The slowdown I noticed here was in September of '05 when gas prices soared to over $3.00 a gallon that's when the housing market cooled off.
Thanks Jay

[david lereah]

I think "housing bubble" is declining because "housing crash" has taken over

what a joke

[smarmyrealtor]

Oh, I thought that was a chart of home prices...

Then, I thought it was a chart of NAR membership

But wait, maybe it was a chart of real estate clerk earnings

The bubble blogs will go away after housing has regressed to the mean. In other words, quite some time from now unless the crash is fierce

[Jim Cronin]

David,

For your viewing pleasure here's a link to the chatter trends on Technorati for "housing crash" : http://www.technorati.com/chart/housing+crash?chartdays=180&language=n&authority=n

They too seem to be in some decline. No predictions here.

[GW]

It would help to compare against "positive" phrases such as "housing boom", which also shows a market decline in usage:

http://www.technorati.com/chart/housing+boom?chartdays=180&language=n&authority=n

I think people are just plain sick of reading and writing about real estate. Now that everyone knows the boom is over, who cares? Nobody blogs about the crash in pets.com stock anymore either, that doesn't mean their stock is going up!

[VancouverCondo]

And heres the generic term 'real estate' which has also been declining:

http://www.technorati.com/chart/real+estate?chartdays=180&language=n&authority=n

Maybe 'bubble bloggers' are just getting tired of typing the word 'housing bubble' in their posts, or maybe we have a bubble blog bubble:

http://vancouvercondo.info/2007/01/is-this-bubble.html

[Jim Cronin]

Hardly... we have just pulled out of the holiday. Look for a huge rise in "real estate" chatter. The other declines have been happening since their last burst in the summer.

[someguy]

I think RE blogs discussing the RE bubble have been great because they made people stop and think before they did something foolish. Usually manias come to a stop when the liquidity runs out. This once appears to have come to a stop because people started using some common sense ! As far as I am concerned, that is progress.

I know the RE bulls don't like it, but the bursting of the housing bubble is better to happen sooner rather than later. The longer it goes on the worse the outcome will be and it has gone on long enough.

And there must be something to these blogs because people sure frequent them. People are generally free to say whatever they want on them or not say anything at all. People seem to think that housing is over priced and due for a correction. Is there any harm in that ?

I think its great that we now have venues to publicly discuss and debate these things.

[Olivia De Havilland Comet]

"In the media business there is an expression: "If it bleeds it leads." Basically, audiences are captivated by bad news."

I don't quite get this. During the run-up in housing prices, the Los Angeles Times would have front page articles about how much house prices had gone up. They even added a new section to the Sunday edition during the run-up (the new 'Real Estate' section).

The same thing happened during the tech stock run-up. the media was fond of declaring how much stocks were going up, how they would continue to go up seemingly for ever, and how we were in "the new economy where the old rules don't apply".

I don't get why people are complaining about the media talking about declining prices, when they seemed to love the media crowing about rising prices.

[Dan Green]

Google Trends confirms it...

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22housing+bubble%22&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2006

[Danilo Bogdanovic]

I have always been a fan of looking outside of the box when trying to determine trends and future market conditions and I see that you are as well!

With the downward trend of the term "housing bubble", it reiterates that the worst is almost over (key word "almost"). The prices in my area make for a very similar chart as the one you have on your post (check out LoudounStats.com for the data and statistics).

And much like the spike up in the term "housing bubble" as of late, I believe that the local market will be softer this spring because everyone is waiting to sell their home until the "spring market" begins in a few weeks.

I agree that using bad news can definitely drive traffic to your blog. Just watch the news on any given day and notice that the networks with the most bad news and drama always seem to be the most watched overall.