Have you ever read one of those stories about a house selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars over asking? You’ve probably at least noticed the multi-zeroed headlines.

I hate those stories.

I hate them because they’re a reminder that some folks have a lot more money to spend than I do. I hate them because they’re the same sort of story as the $10-million-wedding stories, meant to elicit an unhealthy admixture of envy and disdain in us. But I mostly hate them because they’re bad journalism, and they don’t do the real estate biz much good, either.

The reason to read such a story would be because it promises insight into the real estate market. If houses are going over asking, it implies the market is doing well and that it might be a good time to sell your house. If they’re going under-asking, as a Grid bit this week said, that might mean the market is not doing so well and it might be good time to buy a house. Both are good for real estate agents, who represent both buyers and sellers, which is why they feed this sort of information to journalists. When it’s an instance of things going for more than they were listed for, it also makes the agent in question look like he’s done exemplary work for his client, and that he is, therefore, a good agent, one you might want to hire yourself the next time you have a house to sell. When it goes for less, that mostly just means the price was improperly set (sometimes by intransigent sellers who refuse to admit the true value of their property), or the marketing ill-executed.

But as every real estate agent knows, and as every buyer, seller and journalist should know, listing prices are for the most part set by agents. And agents are salespeople, the same breed that came up with the 99 at the end of a price to make things seem cheaper. Setting a house’s price below market value drums up buzz, setting up the same sort of false scenario as clubs that don’t let anyone in to create long lines out front. As long as we continue to fall for it, they’ll continue to do it.

Though perfectly legal and ethical (neither the Toronto Real Estate Board nor the Real Estate Council of Ontario governs this sort of thing), the practice is a disservice to everyone but the agent.* It makes potential buyers think they might get a deal, when in fact sellers who agree to the under-pricing often have reserve prices, phantom numbers known only to them and their agent, below which they will not sell. It makes agents look like they’re doing an amazing sales job, when all they’re really doing is knocking $100,000 off the listing price, and that does a disservice to future sellers who base their decision on what agent to hire on their percentage-of-asking stats, which find their way onto every listing sheet after a sale is completed. And don’t ever forget, anyone who is either buying or selling a house is paying these agents a lot of money for their services and supposed salesmanship, often tens of thousands of dollars in the form of commissions or prices elevated to compensate for those commissions.

This charade also does the general public no good, because it sends messages that actually have very little or nothing at all to do with the market. And this is where it can get really serious, at least in aggregate terms, because the residential real estate market is a game of shadows. If people think the market is soft, the market gets soft, because the market is defined by what people are willing to pay. This is what happened during the American and British crashes in 2007 and 2008. Toronto saw its real estate stats drop, not because anything especially nasty was happening to our economy, which did pretty well throughout the whole thing, not being dependent on nearly as many fissures and weaknesses as those other two economies were. Our market dipped largely because people were worried about it dipping. So whenever these over-asking or under-asking stories become a trend, often simply because the people writing them need to fill some space and there isn’t a whole lot else happening to write about, it can have concrete, Heisenbergian effects on the market they’re covering.

Meaning is forever perched on a precipice in the mass media, buffeted by winds from all sides, from corporate interests represented by marketers and PR firms, to individual journalists just looking for a cool headline or a new or provocative hook or turn of phrase (like the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore stretching out the connotations of “date rape” this week).

There are a whole lot of people out there whose sole job it is to convince us that things are other than they are: that we can get an iPad for $29.87 because they’re “overstocked,”or that “whole wheat” and “free range” are the same as “whole grain” and “pasture-raised.” Unless there’s some serious subterfuge—like agents buying their own listings after withholding them from proper market exposure — houses sell for what they’re worth. It’s pretty close to axiomatic. There are no deals. We rely on things like newspapers and television news to cut through the nonsense, not amplify it. Which is why it mightn’t be a bad idea to email the station or paper next time you see one of these stories, with your own complaint or a link to this story. Let them know you’re not falling for it anymore.

* If you’re interested in what your rights as a buyer and seller in this sort of situation, RECO has a newsletter article for you.

Bert Archer writes for Toronto Standard. Follow him on Twitter @bertarcher.