In Real Estate, Beware the Fraudulent Seller, Too

This post from Calculated Risk dissects sloppy journalistic reporting on the housing and loan crises, and (among many insights) wonders — in the WaPo story My House. My Dream.  It Was An Illusion. — why there’s little investigation of the ethics of predatory selling as well.  (HatTip to discourse.net.) The author encourages investigative reporters to “get ahead of the curve” on unethical selling, not just post mortems of lender and sales scams.  “Nobody wants to have to report on ‘foreclosure avoidance scams’ or ‘subject to’ ripoffs after the fact, like we’re only now reporting onpredatory lending and predatory RE sales practices after the fact.”

It is the kind of close examination of business reporting that Jeff, and hopefully LPB readers, will appreciate.  The blog also has hundreds of good comments to the post.  [Alan Childress]