By Carole Hawkins, [email protected]
As Jacksonville goes, so goes the nation.
It’s not as exciting a slogan as “Downtown is on fire” but it was enough to bring a Wall Street Journal reporter to the city.
Journal reporter Kris Hudson cited Jacksonville as an example of a home sales season off to a good start in his April 9 story, “Housing Market Sees Hopeful Signs of Spring.”
It means we’re seeing a “long-awaited sustainable recovery in the housing market” after a slow recovery and last year’s stall, Hudson wrote.
In the story, local Realtors talked about a brisk sales pace not seen since before the recession. Shoppers reported missing out on homes to competing buyers.
Jacksonville’s pending sales of existing homes were up 30 percent year-over-year in March.
It’s not a story about Jacksonville breaking the bell curve, though.
For cities nationwide that shared Jacksonville’s robust job growth, sales were within a few percentage points of the local market.
Speaking later by phone, Hudson said he chose Jacksonville because it was representative of the national trend.
He stayed away from cities with phenomenal job growth, like Denver and Dallas, which have only one or two months of housing inventory.
“While that might be sexy, it’s not relatable to a lot of people,” he said.
He also considered covering San Antonio, which has a similar price point to Jacksonville.
But Jacksonville gave Hudson another angle to write about. The city was hard hit by the foreclosure crisis, which meant Hudson had a chance of running into boomerang buyers.
That hunch proved correct. He met two home shopping couples who were in credit recovery and he featured one of them in his story.
“I think that’s also representative of what’s going on around the country,” Hudson said. “Some of those folks who’ve had foreclosures or bankruptcies in the past — they’re coming back on the market.”
It’s not the first time the Wall Street Journal has visited Jacksonville to report on housing.
NEFAR Communications Director Melanie Green, who pulled together local stats for Hudson, said she can remember two other instances. Then again, Green has been at NEFAR 15 years.
When Hudson first called NEFAR President Sally Suslak to explore the possibility of coming to Jacksonville, she was told him she could only talk 10 minutes, because she had a meeting.
Instead, the conversation stretched to 45 minutes.
Asked if she thought it was her enthusiasm that made the difference, she said, “Well, I hope so. I was trying real hard. We need to get our name out there.”
It was consistent with an observation of Hudson’s.
“You know, we don’t write about Jacksonville very often,” he said. “I like sometimes focusing stories on markets that aren’t over-covered.”
Suslak was determined to show Hudson how Jacksonville could shine.
They ate at historic district restaurants, Orsay and Black Sheep, and Hudson remembered TacoLu’s at the beach as “good,” though not as authentic perhaps as the Mexican food in his hometown of Dallas.
Another culinary treat he found unique.
“He was incredibly impressed with all of the craft beers we have in Jacksonville,” Suslak said.