San Jose Mercury News reporter Sue McAllister talked to SILVAR members about the challenges of writing about the current real estate market. McAllister, who has been with the Mercury News since 1999, is the go-to writer for the newspaper’s real estate section.

“This is the most interesting 12 to 18-month period in Silicon Valley real estate that I’ve ever covered. It has been really challenging to accurately cover this market.”

When it comes to finding stories to print about real estate, McAllister looks for stories that are timely and affect a great number of people,also they are original. “I get a lot of my best stories from my readers,” McAllister said. “I absolutely welcome those kinds of calls from all of you.”

With the number of stories about foreclosures and declining prices, McAllister has heard many complaints that her headlines are too scary or misleading. However, she encourages people to read the whole story before jumping to conclusions.

McAllister has received a lot of criticism from general readers and the Realtor population, and shared that it is nearly impossible to make everyone happy. An agent asked her why she wrote only negative news. She said: “I really do try to not paint the market with too wide a brush, I have to tell the both sides of the story” she said.

The circulation of the newspaper has gone down in the last two years. In light of this change, However,if we include both print and online media , the number of people reached in 2007 is actually 1.223 million which has gone up.