In the last few years, the real estate market in Lexington and Central Kentucky has been on a near-constant upswing. New homes have continued to pop up throughout the region. Prices for existing homes, particularly in older neighborhoods, have soared in many parts of town. So when business reporter Jim Jordan reported on Oct. 17 that housing sales in the Lexington area were down for the third straight month, it was hard not to take notice.
Jim reported the news in a front-page story that day. Then, as often happens with interesting local trend stories, editors and reporters began talking about what more we could tell readers. Such conversations often take place in our daily news meetings. The first of these is at 10:30, when daytime assigning editors and others get together to talk about what’s on tap for the next day’s paper, and to discuss how we did in that morning’s paper. We get back together at 4 p.m. — along with page designers and night-shift editors — to check back in on the news of the day and to see how things have changed. At each of these, we always try to ask what stories we might be missing, or what threads of stories we need to follow deeper. The conversations are usually wide-ranging and free-form, with ideas tossed out and tossed aside just as quickly. Sometimes, though, ideas stick.
After Jim’s initial story ran, the subject of Lexington’s real estate downturn came up more than once during these news meetings. So Acting Business Editor Jim Niemi and I got together and talked about ways we could dig deeper into the story without taking a lot of time. We decided to focus on two angles: 1) How are home builders and developers trying to keep the market hot, and what kinds of incentives are they offering to lure buyers? 2) How is the downturn affecting the highest end of the market, homes that sell for $1 million or more?
We tapped Jim Jordan and Beverly Fortune, the Herald-Leader’s growth and development writer, to explore these angles. The results of their reporting started running today. First up is Jim’s story about the tempting incentives now being waved in front of Bluegrass home buyers. Friday will bring Beverly’s story on the unique challenges of selling a million-dollar home. Both make for interesting reading, especially if you’re one of those people who grab the real estate listings with the fervor of a baseball fan reaching for the line scores.
I’m sure there are plenty of other angles we can explore on the local real estate front, especially if the slowdown continues. If you have a great real estate story idea, I’d love to hear it.
metro editor
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