An Agent Trying to Scare Up Business

The other day, I visited the Voice of San Diego Web site for my blog post about a real estate agent prevailing in a nationally watched lawsuit.  While I was there, I found a little real estate story that cracked me up.

Turns out there’s an agent in Escondido named Chuck Smiar who’s often quoted in the media. His message is consistent:  Buyers had better get in NOW, or risk missing the boat of real estate prosperity FOREVER.

Voice of San Diego writer Rich Toscano has noticed this tendency of Smiar’s. He not only wrote an amusing story about it, but he took Smiar’s comments and overlaid them onto a chart tracking San Diego’s steadily declining Home Price Index, or HPI:

It’s no secret that many real estate agents are relentlessly optimistic about home-buying and the state of the market. The National Association of Realtors has been pounding the “it’s always a great time to buy a home” message into us for decades.

Smiar, however, is using his platform to scare people into jumping into the market. Most poeple are probably too smart to fall for that line, but it might work on a few people. 

Here’s Toscano’s take:

For the record, I’m not purposely singling out Chuck here. He may be a real nice guy, for all I know. He just happens to provide the funniest examples of the brazen and often delusional boosterism that emanates from so many (though definitely not everyone) in the real estate industry.

You have to wonder why the media chooses Smiar for their go-to quotes, since he so clearly has an agenda. It’s possible to find real estate agents willing to be objective; news directors and editors should insist on that. Thankfully, we have writers like Toscano who can put things into perspective.

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