Did I tell you the Canadian Real Estate Association took a pass on asking me to speak at its annual gabfest this year? Now, there’s a surprise. I’m sure a Garth Turner speech right now would have the same effect as one I delivered years ago to a big city real estate board luncheon.

They threw buns at me. Man, and all I did was give a rousing talk on how real estate commissions are obscene.

I mention this because  for the past couple of days I have savaged our national realtors’ group for a totally unethical media release, and for propagating the myth that housing is (as CREA said), “back to pre-recession levels.”

Actually nothing is back to the way it was a year ago, except human folly.

When I visited my lawyer a few days ago (he specializes in real estate, and I had a property to close on), he said he’d never been busier – ever – than he is right now. This astonished him. In fact, he thought he’d have so much time to kill with a moribund office this summer that he signed up to do some college lecturing. His new burden: no-money-down, long-amortization, first-time purchasers of suburban tract housing outside TO, bought from plans.

Of course, he said he’s also busy representing some buyers who did exactly the same thing last year, and are now walking away from $40,000 deposits, after losing their jobs.  Is that called irony?

I also mention it because this week CREA’s wonky stats were blown out of the water by another housing survey, the Teranet-National Bank index. This one (in stark contrast) shows a weak real estate market, with prices down almost 7% in April from year-earlier levels. Home prices in Vancouver were off 11%, down 9.8% in Calgary and cheaper by 7.6% in Toronto. On a positive note, prices were up 2.4% in Montreal, 0.6% in Ottawa and 0.2% in Halifax.

This brings me an unproven factoid I don’t want overlooked. Media, the real estate industry and their accomplices in the mortgage biz believe they can influence public opinion enough to alter consumer behavior. And they’re probably right. In fact, they’re doing it now. Why do you think my lawyer’s so damn busy?

And how about this guy? He’s just some mortgage broker with a webcam in Calgary, but he scares me nonetheless. He is so typical of people justifying the unjustifiable (a housing boom during a job crisis and a recession), and making up a storyline to do so. His theory: Garth Turner is an evil dork for cautioning against the impact of rising future interest rates on housing.

Hey, says Brokercam, rates will be only “150 to 200 basis points higher” five years from now. That’s it. Big deal. No story. Move along. It’ll mean a pittance of a monthly increase on a $400,000 mortgage – and people’s wages keep on going up, anyway.

And this is based on what? Nothing. He made it up. Just like the big real estate companies do. As CREA does.

Buying a home and investing in real estate are good, solid things to do. But with huge sums of money and giant loans involved, they need to be done with care, especially in days such as these. Buying into a local bubble market could be the path to heartache, just like assuming rates will not soar or the value of your asset can’t ever tank.

Maybe the feds should spend less time worrying about how to regulate the regulated stock market and more sweat on taming the unregulated housing market. After all, it’s bigger, represents more equity and debt, touches many more people, impacts the economy more intensely and is run by manipulative bun-tossing pirate hucksters.

And I was so looking forward to that speech…