Media impacts more than you think.
Whoever controls the media, controls the mind. Jim Morrison
If you’ve been reading or watching the news lately, you may have noticed several articles about the scorching real estate market in North America.
If you haven’t, the short version is that North America is currently in the grips of what is likely a real estate bubble. The bubble has been caused by an almost 50% drop in product availability, and a deep desire from apartment / small condo dwellers to increase their living spaces as they live through rolling lockdowns.
Nothing shocking “per say,” but what may be a bit surprising is the power of the media in shifting the tide.
Early in the pandemic, when people were just getting over the global shutdown but before the rolling lockdowns that most of us have experienced, news outlets — in particular lifestyle magazines, started to run series on people who had “moved out to find space,” and how extraordinary their new lives were.
There was the one on the banker who had moved three hours outside the city and, with her partner, had taken up farming as they had both been let go during the early days of the pandemic. They had discovered “how much fun” it was, and we’re looking forward to their next chapter.
Or the couple who were renters and thinking they would never own a home only to move to a small town and bought their “dream house,” as they were both working remotely.
And the guy who discovered better life balance after selling his penthouse, minimizing his belongings and moving to what essentially would be a year-round cottage.
It seemed like media outlets shared these stories daily. And as these stories began to take hold, the general public noticed these stories helped to be the context and the reference materials for a cultural shift over time. People began believing they needed to get a larger place to discover a better life.
Further still, there was a lot of fear spread throughout the media during the early days of COVID 19. I can’t blame the media, they were reporting what they knew, but many people combined large cities = fear with small towns = “live a better life” and ushered in a banner year for real estate.
I’m not saying that the media was or are 100% responsible for causing a boiling housing market. No, that’s on you and me. However, we constantly read articles and watch clips, have conversations about stories we hear, and use the media as reference materials. As we take these actions, we succumb to a bit of mass hysteria.
Media plays a significant role in our cultural narrative, and we should be a bit more aware/mindful of this immense power in our lives.
But let’s flip the script on the housing story I shared above.
Currently, media outlets have begun to run stories on the house hunting craze. Stories of people paying over asking like the story last week of a home in Toronto going for $600,000 over asking are taking the front page by storm. Advisers are saying “not to buy,” and many analysts predict a correction at some point (when — no one knows). But at the moment of writing this article, these stories seem to have little impact. Or so we think.
Who the media is influencing is much harder to understand fully -, but this is its most decisive impact.
In Canada, The Honourable Chrystia Freeland is Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. Tim Macklem is the governor of the Bank of Canada. These two individuals have immense power in shifting the sands on the current hot housing market. Combined, they could introduce new legislation, raise interest rates, cause a housing correction and more. And while both of them have a small army of advisors, analysts, researchers, forecasters, etc., they both have another source of information: the general public. But for Ms. Freeland and Mr. Macklem to talk to every person in Canada would be impossible (ok, very hard). So, where do they get the pulse of what the people of Canada think and feel? You got it — the media. I’m confident they both read or watch the news and can buckle under the same pressures that you or I would. If they read that the housing market is ‘ridiculous’ enough times, they may (and likely will) yield.*
We don’t see this influence for you and me because we’re not Ms. Freeland and Mr. Macklem. But that is the power that media outlets (traditional or new age) have. They are in the business of influence, and we would do much better as a society if, for a moment, we accepted that.
*As a note, by no means am I suggesting that Ms. Freeland and Mr. Macklem should take no action or that Ms. Freeland and Mr. Macklem only listen to the media and nothing else.
