Time for Morning News real estate editor to eat some crow

Eighteen months or so ago, Dallas Morning News Real Estate Editor Steve Brown was leading a parade of that newspaper’s staff writers and go-to information sources saying the subprime crisis wouldn’t affect Dallas. Well, today, Brown changes his tune, although he doesn’t eat crow.

And, he doesn’t change his tune enough to totally dodge hypocrisy charges. Or, Pollyanna the real estate market bull charges.

Brown discusses Dallas-Fort Worth’s 4 percent year-over-year fall in housing prices in February, then says it’s not that bad:

The Dallas-area had the third-lowest annual decline, behind Portland, Ore., down 2 percent, and Seattle, off 2.7 percent.

First, Charlotte, N.C. actually had an increase, so Dallas was just fourth best, or fourth least worst, of the top 20 cities, not No. 3.

Second, throw out the subprime ground zero cities of Los Angeles, San Diego Phoenix, Las Vegas (those two feeling the fallout of more people unable to sell their L.A./S.D. houses), San Francisco, Miami and Tampa, and only three other cities had declines of more than 10 percent.

Detroit? Economy that continues to crumble and people that continue to flee. That’s going to continue to deteriorate. Not sure why Minneapolis and D.C. had double-digit declines.

But, Dallas 4.1 percent is not that much different than Boston’s 4.6 percent, Denver’s 5.5, Atlanta’s 5.6 or even NYC’s 6.6 percent drop.

So, let’s eat a little more humble pie, Steve Brown.

If you want to show him a little love on eating that humble pie, give him an e-jingle.