The New NAR Ad Campaign

After seeing the full-page layout in the local paper, the compulsion to analyze the individual points of the recent National Association of Realtors' ad was intense. But, after seeing that Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture had already experienced the same desire and acted on it, there didn't seem to be much point to duplicating his effort.

See Analyzing "Why it's a great time to buy or sell a home".

Obviously, the best part of this ad is the quote from former Fed Chief Alan Greenspan, who contributes to the section with the heading Positive Outlook.

Former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan recently said that housing prospects are looking up. "Most of the negatives in housing are probably behind us. The fourth quarter should be reasonably good, certainly better than the third quarter."

It's hard to get too overwhelmed by the selection of words - "most", "probably", "should", "reasonably" - all within two short sentences.

Barry notes:

Is this the same former Fed Chief Greenspan who advised getting variable APRs at the precise low in interest rates?

If memory serves, at about the same time that Alan Greenspan was recommending variable rate mortgages, NAR chief economist David Lereah was making dismissive comments about people who don't have low variable rate loans - that they were not doing a very good job of managing their money, or something of that nature.

Here's what the ad looks like:

Here's what some Photoshop work from a Boston.com message board turns it into:

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Last week's cartoon from The Economist: