Why top real estate stories appear elsewhere

Bill Goss, the real estate editor for the New York Times, has been taking questions from readers this week, and one wanted to know why all of the good real estate stories appear in other sections of the paper, like Business and the A front.

Goss replied, “There’s a simple reason that you find news of the subprime crisis in our National and Business Day sections. The foreclosure and debt crisis is mainly affecting cities and towns in others parts of the country; the Sunday Real Estate section goes only to our city and regional readers, and we report the issues that are most relevant here. The real estate market in the city is still robust, although we have written about problems that are beginning to emerge. We write about what goes on here, whether news or features.

“We ran a cover story in the Sunday section on April 1, headlined ‘The Battle for a Mortgage,’ as many borrowers in New York, and not just those at risk of default, found it hard to get mortgages.

“We had a cover story on May 27 headlined ‘Fighting Off Foreclosure,’ about New Yorkers who were struggling to pay their mortgages.

“In August, Christine Haughney wrote a piece for Metro on how troubles in the mortgage market were beginning to strain real estate deals in Manhattan. She followed that with a piece in the Sunday section on Sept. 23 about New Yorkers grappling with loan rates.”

Read more here.