Understanding the housing market rhetoric

How do we talk about the housing market, and how does our rhetoric affect the market?

Price per square metre, turnover time, level of interest rates, and numbers of houses and flats for sale. The air is thick with figures and numbers when the media draws the picture of the current housing market.

The crisis, which started out as a financial crisis, has suddenly spread. You might doubt whether we have a banking crisis, a housing crisis, an American crisis, or maybe even a global crisis.

The interpretation of the crisis is very important to how we perceive it – and how we react to it. The housing market definitely proves it - the fact that we talk about the figures really has an impact on the number of houses and flats sold.

The housing market will be the focal point when CBS invites to a conference on the connection between rhetoric and economics.

The figures must fit into the positive story

- It is hardly a secret that a number of professional market players, which earn their living from the housing market, are very interested in keeping the market going. That is, interested in rhetorically lifting the housing market out of the crisis by constantly putting the current figures into a positive light, says Assistant Professor Jonas Gabrielsen from the Department of International Culture and Communication Studies.

Jonas Gabrielsen and Assistant Professor Sine Nørholm Just from the same department is behind the conference.

Banks, mortgage lenders, and estate agency chains with communication departments of their own are constantly interpreting the figures and putting them into words. The way we actually talk about the housing market is very significant to the way we perceive the wellbeing of the market, says Sine Nørholm Just.

- Obviously, your view on the housing market depends on the way you hear about it. Is the current price reduction the ‘tip of the iceberg’ or is it just ‘balancing the market’?, Jonas Gabrielsen illustrates.

Sign up for the conference

Read more and sign up for the conference ‘The housing market from figures to words’ (Boligmarkedet fra tal til tale)

Sign up for the conference

Read more and sign up for the conference ‘The housing market from figures to words’ her (Boligmarkedet fra tal til tale)