Selling Your Home In 2009? Root For The Steelers To Lose Super Bowl 43.

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The Pittsburgh Steelers have won 5 Super Bowls in the history of its franchise and -- for the sake of the housing markets -- let's hope this year doesn't make Number 6.

In 4 of the 5 years the Stillers won it all, the national real estate market floundered over the 12 months immediately following their championship.  Check it out:

• 1975: Home prices fell 1.37%
• 1976: Home prices rose 3.22%
• 1979: Home prices fell 2.84%
• 1980: Home prices fell 4.81%
• 2006: Home prices fell 3.60%

Meanwhile, let's look at the championship history of the Arizona Cardinals franchise:

• 1925: Home prices rose 5.2%
• 1947: Home prices rose by 21.3%

Clearly, this spring season's home sellers should be rooting for the Cardinals Sunday.

But, it doesn't stop there.  More than few economic analysts fingered the housing market as our nation's way out from recession.  It's an idea that easy to latch onto, after all.  As housing prices have plunged, mortgage lending has tightened and consumer spending has gone la bye-bye.

A reversal in home prices could turn the economy around.

Therefore, aside from two major caveats -- (1) that there's no such thing as a national real estate market, and (2) that median sales price is an irrelevant statistic -- it's pretty clear: it's in America's best interest for the Steelers to lose the Super Bowl.

So, in the name of all that is patriotic and good, here's your personal plan for Super Bowl 43: Cheer for the Cardinals, jeer for the Steelers. Anything else is anti-American.

Sources
Irrational Exuberance, 2nd Edition
Robert J. Shiller
Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics and International Center for Finance

http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/data/Fig2-1.xls

U.S. Median Home Prices