NAR Newspaper Blitz Urges Buyers to Act Now

The national ad campaign points out that interest rates are near 40-year lows and housing inventories are higher than they've been in decades.
REALTOR® Magazine Online
The NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® on Friday launched a national advertising campaign to urge potential home buyers who have been waiting on the sidelines to act now before prices gain traction. The campaign includes full-page newspaper ads running in six of the nation’s leading newspapers.

NAR’s first-ever newspaper blitz features the headline, “It’s a great time to buy or sell a home.”

The advertisement points out:

    • Interest rates have fallen seven months in a row and are near 40-year lows.
    • Inventories of existing homes are higher than they have been in decades.
    • Home prices have stabilized.

But the perfect conditions for buyers are likely to change as sales pick up, prices increase, and conditions improve for sellers next year.

“Homeownership is a safe, secure way to build long-term wealth,” the ad reads. “The national median price of homes bought 10 years ago has increased 88 percent. The number of U.S. households is expected to increase 15 percent during the next decade, creating a continued high demand for housing.”

The ad also quotes Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, saying, “Most of the negatives in housing are probably behind us. The fourth quarter should be reasonably good, certainly better than the third quarter.”

Spreading the Message

The advertisement appears today in The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, and will run Sunday in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune. It will run in the same newspapers again on the weekend of Nov. 12.

NAR President Thomas M. Stevens of Vienna, Va., says the newspaper ads are the beginning of an NAR campaign to urge buyers and sellers to take advantage of the favorable market conditions. Two new network television and radio ads directed at buyers and sellers will begin airing in the second week of January. The new spots will be rotated into NAR’s $40 million network Public Awareness Campaign.

NAR’s 1.3 million members and state and local REALTOR® associations are being encouraged to adopt the message in their own advertising and communications to consumers, Stevens says.

“The market is much better than you might hear or read,” Stevens says. “Consumers should take advantage of this perfect alignment of low rates and extraordinary inventory before market conditions change.”

Where the Market Stands

Total housing inventory levels fell 2.4 percent at the end of September to 3.75 million existing homes available for sale, which represents a 7.3-month supply at the current sales pace, according to NAR’s existing-home sales report. The national median existing-home price for all housing types was $220,000 in September, which is 2.2 percent below September 2005, when the median was $225,000. The median is a typical market price where half of the homes sold for more and half sold for less.

According to Freddie Mac, the national average commitment rate for a 30-year, conventional, fixed-rate mortgage was 6.40 percent in September, down from 6.52 percent in August.