I have something of what I call a voodoo frame of mind. I believe that what we concentrate on is what we get. If we tell ourselves a thousand times a day how horrible the world is, how awful people treat each other, even that there are SOOOOO many bad drivers out there then this is all that we will see. What we believe becomes so, at least in our little slice of the world.

So what does this have to do with real estate? Well, look around you. The real estate market reflects our economy, or vice versa - I've never been sure which comes first. People ask me "What the heck happened?"

I think that it all started with the media, which is perpetuating a self-defeating cycle. (All I know is what I see - I don't know which economic guru to listen to so I've stopped paying attention to any of them - they're all contradicting each other anyway.)

So here's my story. The media caused the real estate feeding frenzy of 2005. News stories about the scarcity of real estate and the wonderful investment of real estate sold newspapers and got hits and so they reported it more and sold more ads and so they amped it up and pretty soon people were buying every piece of property that they could get their hands on whether they could afford it or not. The lenders were throwing the money at these buyers because hey - if the borrower defaults we'll just take it back and re-sell it at a profit. Of course we can - watch the Today Show.

This couldn't continue indefinitely and so of course, it all fell apart and the frenzy slowed down and then quickly came to a screaming halt.

So now the media concentrates on what they're portraying as the poor stupid fools who bought during the frenzy. They tell horror stories of markets freezing and "flippers" stuck with houses they can't pay for and variable rate borrowers who can't make their payments and the public says, "Whoa! I'd better walk away from my house now!" Or, "Gee, I'd better not buy anything until I know what's going on!" And so they do and the economy gets worse because no money is moving.

So, tell me. How do we get the media to tell the true story? How do we make it sexy that it's a wonderful time to buy a house? How do we get them to reverse some of this damage?

I'm fully aware that my approach to what is undoubtedly an intricate economic process is going to make some people crazy. That's OK - your truth is not necessarily my truth, and I'm always open to seeing more pieces to a puzzle.