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Pro tip: I stopped trusting the headline number on viral rent clips after the Austin one fell apart
A clip about Austin rents dropping 12% got shared around my whole feed last week, so I pulled the actual source and it was one apartment data firm counting only new leases in luxury buildings downtown. I used to just repeat those numbers to friends at lunch like they were facts, but now I open the source link first and check who paid for the study. Two of the three clips I checked in April used the same firm and the same slice of the market. Does anyone know a good site that tracks which outlets actually link the raw data?
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jordan_hill21d ago
Who actually checks if the outlet got paid to run the clip? That's the part nobody talks about. Some of these sites get sponsored posts from the same data firms they cite, so the "source" is basically the company grading its own homework. I've seen it with local news sites too, where a "housing report" is really just a press release with a byline. Before you even get to the raw data, look at the about page and see who funds the place. A site can link every source and still be on the payroll.
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