“Vancouver sales hit 10-year low…” Imagine being at the point in your life where you’re ready to purchase a home – and then you read this. Immediately you second guess your buying decision and are filled with fear.

The media certainly communicates information to the public. Unfortunately, the headlines are often negative and do not paint an accurate picture of the story.

Take for example the headline above. When you read it, one must think that Vancouver’s yearly real estate market has hit an all-time low for the first time in 10 years. However, you realize after reading the story that only sales in June were the lowest total for the month in the region since 2000 and not at catastrophic levels – just lower. You also learn that although June 2012 didn’t perform as well as the month of June in the past, detached house prices still showed an average increase of 3.3%. The article goes on to talk about how we are now in a buyer’s market as there is now more supply in product than in recent months with a 22% increase in listings from the year before.

An alternate headline could have been, “Metro Vancouver considered a Buyer’s Market”, which could have then been followed up by the very same stats. Instead of paralyzing people with fear, the headline could have just as easily presented the opportunity in the market. Unfortunately, this happens all too often and negative headlines are filling our papers which in turn are often the quotes at dinner parties and around water coolers spreading the fear.

The public relies heavily on the media to provide accurate, relevant and timely information. We, the public, need to spend a bit more time reading through the articles to get the true story while our newspapers could use a headline to better describe the content rather than sensationalize the negative to sell a few extra papers.

Irshaad Ahmad