Pretty busy day locally for real estate news, huh? I’ll post small editorials about today’s articles later on. There is one subject, however, that ties them all together and that’s what I’ll address right now.

“Single Home Sales UP”, “Foreclosures Reach All Time High in MA”, and “New Home Sales Down”; those are your major headlines today. The first two in the Globe this morning, and the other from CNBC right before the market open at 9 AM. Don’t you think our society has become just a little Real Estate obsessed?

I do. Next to the Red Sox, Real Estate is the topic of discussion among family, friends and strangers in our region. It’s to the point that we have television channels dedicated to the industry, with shows like Flip this House, Design on a Dime, and My House is Worth What?

I could go on for a while but you probably have most of them in your DVR.

Not to mention Bloggers like as myself, who try to add their two-cents everyday.

Okay, almost everyday.

There was a time when you bought a house, raised a family, and lived in that house well past the end of the traditional 30 year mortgage. Your conversation revolved around leaky pipes, siding vs. painting and landscaping and how you were going to fix them. Today’s conversation is about inventory, interest rates, and equity increases year after year and what your next move will be. We’ve all become junior economists, in a sense.

I look to my parent’s generation (baby boomers) and think they had it right. They lived there lives and then…

That’s when it hit me. Your basic “wow how’d I miss that?” moment? My God, they’re the ones who are causing most of this! They’ve done their family duties and are either downsizing, moving into the city, or buying down the Cape, NH, ME, or VT, maybe even Florida or Arizona.

I don’t think they wanted it this way either. In this Age of Information marketers, TV producers, and journalists realized that it was a topic too big to ignore, and we all just became obsessed.

That said, the question I pose to everyone I talk to about this is “Do you think this is another fad?” I don’t remember shows being dedicated to day traders during the 90’s, or even to the oil boom of the 60’s and 70’s. Those were topics firmly planted in the business section, and they stayed there.

As someone who works in the industry, I struggle to answer this myself. Home ownership is deeply rooted in the American Dream and has been around since the birth of our nation. Will Flip that House and others air for years to come,or is this another fad that will subside back to the pages of the business section?

I’d really like to know what you think about this topic. Please email me at JamesM or post a comment here on the blog.

Filed under: Real Estate 2.0, Boston Real Estate Blogging