With the economic news, especially regarding the housing markets, worsening every day, some real estate agents and brokers are getting ticked off about the placement of this negative news.

At issue in some markets is the fact that this negative real estate news is placed near real estate marketing ads purchased by brokers.
 
On the one hand, brokers are trying to put as "pretty" a face as they can on the housing market downturn while the news media is trying to paint a realistic picture of the situation.

In Elizabethtown Kentucky, brokers recently lashed out at the local paper for its placements of a negative article in the traditional "real estate section". The news paper, The News Enterprise, has been completely insensitive to the fact that huge sums of money is spent annually by local REALTORS and they feel that they have some "ownership" in the real estate section of paper.

The New Enterprise runs very little risk of losing real estate agent ad money since they are the only game in town. They own the only viable news paper and the only monthly "Homes Magazine" published in that market area.

So real estate advertisers are just going to have to live with it. The news paper has a right (some say an obligation) to report the economic news and the real estate brokers have the right to stop buying ads (which is not likely to happen).

It looks like the real estate brokers have painted themselves into a corner by relying solely on one source for advertising for the past thirty years. 

 Click here to read a  National Industry story that was a spin-off of this blog entry.