This builder is really reaching

Here is an ad from today's new house section in the OC Register. If it appears too small on your screen, click the image for the full version.
File this one under insulting. The approach taken by this ad is so obvious, it's virtually transparent. They're not going after anyone who's really informed about the housing market, because they would laugh this off based on a mountain of concrete facts. Anyone who sees this ad and says "the pictures of signs in the newspaper told me to buy a house now, so I listened" should have their head examined.

This ad is instead targeting a sidelines buyer, perhaps one who really, really wants to get into the market for a variety of emotional reasons including peer and/or cultural pressures, but is holding back until they see some magic light that tells them it's finally time to jump in.

In reality, there doesn't have to be anything like a "magic light" - just an ongoing analysis of the numbers to determine when buying makes financial sense based on someone's individual situation. Notice how, in this case, emotion plays little into the decision of when is a good time to buy. These people who think first before reacting are not the target audience of this ad campaign.

Instead, the purpose of this type of ad is to try and hook in the remaining gullible fools who may have heard a bit about house prices not performing like they used to (as if 20% appreciation is some normal standard), but are willing to put emotions before their brains.

There's also some irony here. If we really should "not be mislead (they couldn't even spell this word right, as a commentor pointed out) by all the information out there on the housing market" as the advertisement claims, why then should we listen to the ad itself when it's telling us that there's "never been a better time" to buy one of your homes?

Here's some more of the ad:

We can see prices have been slashed by nearly a quarter in Corona Hills, and 19% in Montclair. In Irvine, they've come down by $50k. Even if you did believe the builder into thinking that this is the perfect time to buy, what happens if they drop the prices even lower? Wouldn't that be a more perfect time to buy? I thought it was always a great time to buy or even sell a house! Wait, where have I heard that before...