Sorry to keep coming back to this, but I keep seeing and hearing crazy stuff from local developers. Case in point, the latest cover story from The Charlotte Weekly (not yet online.)

The piece was clearly prompted by the One Charlotte suspension. Reporter Regan White set out to put that project’s postponement in “perspective” by talking to Uptown developer and Charlotte Center City Partner David Furman. Furman immediately goes into spin mode:

“It’s interesting to me that the story in [the Observer] About One Charlotte not moving forward was four times as big as (the story it ran) when they announced they were going to do the project to begin with,” he said, adding that he thinks the media wants to report that the center-city housing market is ailing. “I just don’t think that’s the case,” he said. … “One Charlotte is a totally isolated situation,” Furman said. “It’s isolated to a developer that found a unique idea, thought there was a broad base of support for that unique idea and found out there really wasn’t. … It was amenities heavy. It really wasn’t about the space; it was about the amenities and the lifestyle offered in the building and I think the market didn’t respond. … It doesn’t have anything to do with the bread and butter of the housing market that is here everyday — the units that range from $200,000 to $500,000.”

Wow. How many delusions can one man harbor?

First, the notion that Doug Smith and the Observer are rooting for an Uptown real estate downturn is rubber-room crazy. Just nutty. The paper needs the ad revenue if nothing else.

But how about the certitude that One Charlotte was an isolated pull-back? How does that explain 3030 South Tryon going away? How does the delay of a 100-unit building with prices ranging from the $200,000s to about $1.6 million comport with Furman’s bold claim that the broad middle of the Uptown market is just fine?

Wait, there is more. Last fall when the developer of the Carolina Theater changed plans and effectively delayed start-up on condos for that site, it was to move away from the price-point Furman claims is still strong and toward a boutique plan of 20 high-end, multi-million dollar units.

Here’s a another little datum to take away: Furman still has to sell about 20 of the 200 units he built in the TradeMark project. Let’s see when that happens.

Furman’s take could be just one guy with something to sell except that White also teases scary statements out of realtor Dan Cottingham of Cottingham-Chalk fame.

“I think this is an entry-level recession,” he says. This flies in the face of what we’ve seen nationally — and even to some extent locally, as the high end of the real estate market already seems to be pulling back, even among single family homes. Worse still, Cottingham cites the Fed interest rate cuts as a source of cheer for the real estate market.

Mortgage rates, in fact, have shot up in response to the Fed’s action last week and yesterday. This is exactly what you would expect if you understand that inflation expectations are the most important factor in long-term interest rates. As rates go up, that will automatically shrink the market for housing — at every price level, urban and suburban alike.

Heaven help anyone who depends our local “experts” for guidance during this time.