NAREE E-News May 20, 2020

NAREE's Miami Conference Is Four Months Away

Video Meetings Connect Members in the Meantime

By Mary Doyle-Kimball
NAREE Executive Director

Because of the Covid-19 crisis, NAREE leaders have moved the annual conference in Miami from June to September and started a series of video meetings online under the direction NAREE President Catie Dixon, Bisnow Managing Editor.

NAREE’s conference, now slated for September 23-26 at the Kimpton Epic in Miami, offers flexibility for those who want to sign up now as well last-minute planning options. Visit naree.org/conference to register and make hotel reservations. Information on session formats and logistics including ground transportation also are on the conference page of naree.org.

NAREE’s next virtual meeting will be Thursday, June 25 at 2:00 PM Eastern. The Counselors of Real Estate will offer NAREE members an exclusive on its top ten issues affecting commercial and residential real estate via video link. Q&A will follow. CRE usually releases its trend analysis to NAREE members in June in person. A link to get sign-in credentials to CRE Global Chair Michel Couillard’s presentation to come in future editions of NAREE E-News.

NAREE 2017 president Michelle Jarboe, now with Crain’s Cleveland Business, offers a recap and takeaways from NAREE’s last virtual roundtable for journalists as you scroll below. Members can also email nareeprograms@gmail.com for a link to the recorded session. Check out NU Live on naree.org for updates and write-ups of all roundtables.

NAREE Vice President Jeff Collins, Orange County Register, is NAREE University’s 2020 Conference Dean. He has a preview below of some of NU’s peer-to-peer professional development sessions planned for NAREE’s 54th Annual Conference. NU conference sessions and NU Live video sessions are designed to help journalists up their game by hearing best practices from peers around the globe.

NAREE’s May Roundtable Focused on How to Stand Out and Avoid Sensationalism

By Michelle Jarboe

Crain’s Cleveland Business and NAREE 2017 President

Eileen Woods used to line up cover stories for the Boston Globe’s Sunday real estate section three months in advance. Now, building on the ever-shifting foundation of coronavirus, the farthest the newspaper’s real estate editor can see into the future is six to seven weeks.

That’s longer than many journalists can fathom right now, during a pandemic that has upended government, the U.S. economy and large segments of the real estate business – along with the already-ailing newspaper industry.

During a May 7 NAREE virtual roundtable, Woods joined other editors and reporters in a discussion about tossed-out editorial calendars and creative approaches to a ubiquitous story.

At the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, investigative reporter J. Scott Trubey’s longer-term real estate stories are in limbo. For more than two months, his beat has been dominated by the novel coronavirus. He’s focused, in particular, on Georgia’s struggles with testing and tracking.

Plan to Pivot

Trubey said he can plan only in two-week increments. Even on that modest timeline, a story he’s working on can quickly change directions, or end up in the scrap heap.

With news breaking at a frenetic pace, the staff at Multi-Housing News and Commercial Property Executive began holding daily morning news meetings as the crisis deepened across the country. By early May, the pressure had eased somewhat, said Suzann Silverman, who serves as editorial director for both C-suite-focused publications.

The planning meetings had dropped from five to three each week. Reporters and editors were attempting to take forward-looking approaches to stories and to track down sources who weren’t being quoted everywhere else.

Longer-term projects remain the biggest challenges, Silverman said, noting that digital monthly magazine stories can be updated until just before publication. The company’s printed mid-year guides, traditionally distributed at conferences, are another matter.

Beyond questions of relevance, it’s unclear whether conferences will even happen this year – or whether people will think twice about picking up a magazine.

While fielding questions from moderator and NAREE President Catie Dixon, of Bisnow, panelists talked about the importance of standing out while avoiding sensationalism.

Keep It Local

Business journalists are mining data to tally up missed rent payments and lost jobs. They are using social media to put faces on the numbers and chronicling how Americans are living – and inhabiting spaces – differently, from the roommates spending far too much time together to the families separated by fears.

“Our approach is to make everything local,” Woods said. “Local sources for everything.”

At the Las Vegas Review-Journal, reporters have interviewed laid-off casino workers, struggling renters and anxious homebuyers. The newsroom is using interactive graphics to give readers a quick snapshot of dwindling tourism and mounting unemployment claims.

Finding relevant real estate data can be more difficult, since industry reports tend to lag by a month or two, said Eli Segall, the Review-Journal’s real estate reporter.

He’s tried to anticipate the future while reporting on the past, in stories that predicted sagging home sales before the local data looked bleak.

Segall has also been drawing on history, including Las Vegas-area newspaper accounts of the 1918 flu pandemic and the Great Depression, to add colorful and sometimes uncannily familiar-sounding details to articles about potential fallout from this public-health emergency.

Longtime housing and mortgage writer Lew Sichelman questioned whether publications are allocating too many resources to coronavirus coverage. At this point, he asked, is it possible that some real estate readers are tiring of the virus?

“I’m hearing that,” Dixon said. “But the numbers of readership say otherwise.”

NAREE University Lines up Data Reporting Experts for September Conference

By Jeff Collins, Orange County Register

NAREE Vice President and NAREE University Dean

A news release pops up in your inbox. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in your community, it says, is now $3,500 a month.

Should you use it?

On one hand, that’s shockingly high for an apartment in your city. That headline is sure to get a lot of hits.

On the other hand, that sounds just a little too high. How reliable is that data? Is it from a trustworthy source? Is it even remotely accurate?

Using and analyzing data appropriately will be just one of the topics at NAREE University, which will be part of the lineup for the organization’s 2020 conference this September in Miami.

Veteran real estate journalist Mary Shanklin and Bisnow Deputy Managing Editor Ethan Rothstein will be among the panelists for this breakfast session on the first day of the conference. They will help reporters in the trenches discern between good real estate data and numbers that are sensational, shoddy or unreliable.

They will offer both lists of the most reliable residential and commercial data sources, where to find them as well as some sources that often are overlooked but worthy of your attention.

And that’s just one of many NAREE U sessions on tap for the upcoming conference. Other sessions will cover the 2020 Census, investigative writing tips for real estate reporters, an exploration of social media limits and the latest developments in new media, plus COVID-19 coverage analysis. During the lunch hour on Wednesday, for example, a panel of writers and editors will debate how far a journalist can go in expressing views and opinions in social media posts.

What are the policies at major publications around the country regarding personal views in Tweets or on Facebook? What are some of the most recent controversies that have arisen after journalists crossed the line?

And just where is that line and how well are the rules of fairness and objectivity being observed?

Mining the 2020 Census for real estate stories will be the topic of the breakfast session on Thursday.

NAREE has invited a data dissemination specialist from the US Census Bureau to provide an overview on how journalists can use the census’ new platform, data.census.gov, which replaced American FactFinder on March 31. In that session, conferees will get an overview of what data is out there and how to find it.

Shanklin and Bankrate.com writer and NAREE board member, Jeff Ostrowski, will share their lists of stories that can be told using census numbers.

Ralph Bivins, editor of the award-winning online publication Realty News Report, will lead a panel of journalists from innovative news outlets on the latest trends and changes in today’s newsrooms.