The language of real estate

Buzzwords power an industry

Is there an industry where words are more powerful than real estate? Alan Greenspan's "frothy" label is still routinely quoted six months after he used it to describe the real estate market.

How best to describe the condition of the......real estate market? Is it "cooling" or "melting down?" Will there be a "pause?" A "soft landing?" A "slow leak?" Are you a "bubble" believer or of the "frothy" faith?

The yearning for a smooth transition from the surging market is seen in the increasingly frequent use in the last six months of the phrase "soft landing."

As real estate marketing becomes more dominated by the Internet, spiders and crawlers are tracking and counting each and every word that is written in cyberspace.

As the author of a blog, I can track the keywords that are used in a search to find this site. Right now, searches leading to this site are dominated by phases like "SW Florida real estate bubble," "Is Lehigh real estate market healthy," and "condo oversupply." This is an interesting shift from 6-12 months ago when the majority of the searches were focused on "investing" and buying.

The Power of Words [NY Times]