Property values in Davis Sq (and Somerville)

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

I just saw in the Somerville News an estimate saying that property values in Somerville declined 2% this year:
http://www.thesomervillenews.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=2&ArticleID=218. Somebody mentioned that Zillow actually reports a loss of about 8%. This is confusing. The Editor of the Somerville News pointed out that Zillow does not have accurate estimates. In my experience, Zillow is pretty on the mark when it comes to sale prices, they seem to be doing lots of good stats on their datasets. Any idea on how to gather additional information on this? I doubt one can trust the Somerville News, given that it was created by the owners of ERA, one of the Somerville Real Estate agencies (clearly, they would not want to advertise that property values are going down around here).

One funny tidbit. Have you received a pack of coupon last week? I received one, and one of the coupons was an ad for ERA, the Norton Group. It says: "Voted #1 Real Estate Company 2000 to 2007 By the readers of the Somerville News"! Now, when many of the readers are ERA employees or relatives of ERA employees, that is a bit of a conflict of interest, isn't it? :)

Comments

reading comprehension doesn't seem to be your strong point

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

the somerville news wasnt created by the owners of era

Not for nothing, no one said it was.

the somerville news best of series was around long before era was associated with the newspaper - check it out, its easy to find out the right information on that

Again, no one said the ERA link predated anything.

what was said was:

One funny tidbit. Have you received a pack of coupon last week? I received one, and one of the coupons was an ad for ERA, the Norton Group. It says: "Voted #1 Real Estate Company 2000 to 2007 By the readers of the Somerville News"! Now, when many of the readers are ERA employees or relatives of ERA employees, that is a bit of a conflict of interest, isn't it? :)

Re: reading comprehension doesn't seem to be your strong point

[laryu.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure of your point. The OP said: "I doubt one can trust the Somerville News, given that it was created by the owners of ERA, one of the Somerville Real Estate agencies (clearly, they would not want to advertise that property values are going down around here)."

Can you clarify?

Re: reading comprehension doesn't seem to be your strong point

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

My point is that james norton was responding to statements that weren't made.

Re: reading comprehension doesn't seem to be your strong point

[laryu.livejournal.com]

But they the statements were made, in the original post, just above where you quoted...

Re: reading comprehension doesn't seem to be your strong point

[ron_newman]

James Norton is correct, actually. The Somerville News long predates the Norton family's partial ownership of it. Some of the years in the cited range, 2000-2007, were years when the Norton family didn't partially own the newspaper.

Re: reading comprehension doesn't seem to be your strong point

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Whether he is correct or not is not the point, Ron.
He's responding to claims that aren't made.

And, just like pointing out a spelling error means it's likely you'll have one in your comment, I missed one key line in the original post.

Apologies to jamesnorton

Re: reading comprehension doesn't seem to be your strong point

[ron_newman]

The OP says "I doubt one can trust the Somerville News, given that it was created by the owners of ERA". The phrase after the comma is false, and Jamie is correct to object to it. (The way he objected to it, that's a different issue.)

Re: reading comprehension doesn't seem to be your strong point

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

see edited response on reading comprehension

Re: reading comprehension doesn't seem to be your strong point

[ron_newman]

Yep, you edited while I was replying, and then replied before I could re-edit ;-)

Re: reading comprehension doesn't seem to be your strong point

[jamesnorton.livejournal.com]

no need to apologize - i was an asshat for being so reactionary, regardless of the time of day/night or me being sick.

Re: reading comprehension doesn't seem to be your strong point

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

The word "reactionary" doesn't mean what you think it means.

You either mean "reactive" or "defensive". Probably "defensive".