I am in Bellevue, a burb of Seattle, to teach the Marketing & Merchandising course for the NAHB’s Institute of Residential Marketing with my friend Mark Bornstein, who has lived in this area of the country for many, many years. It has been about four or five years since I’ve been in Bellevue (home of Microsoft, by the way) and I was struck as I drove into town by the sight of about eight of those giant cranes gracing the skyline. Yes, there are eight to ten high rise buildings currently under construction in Bellevue from residential condos and high end shopping centers, to office space with restaurants, to mixed use buildings which will accommodate specialty retail on the ground floor, with condos above. This town obviously has not been reading the national newspapers and magazines or watching the national news because it is completely ignoring the housing slump or maybe it is just thumbing its nose at it. And that really is my point, if these national (and even local) journalists would get their heads out of their cubicles, they’d see that there are plenty of markets where real estate is cranking along just fine. If they would only do the numbers they’d see that this is the best time to buy a home with prices and mortgage rates low at the same time. But do we hear stories about that? No. They are more interested in the gloom and doom. It is time to start reporting how consumers can take advantage of this situation to become homeowners – maybe for the first time.

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