Housing is back! So says the media and Lawrence Yun of NAR. 872,000 new housing starts in September. Prices are up some 11.7% in September. And Lawrence Yun is projecting 15% increase in home values over the next three years. So… what the hell is going on over at the FHA? The Federal Housing Agency, … Read more
I am not an economist, and I don’t play one on TV, and I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night… but I kinda look like one. Plus, Seth Price of Placester isn’t an economist either as far as I know, although he’s a good friend who is not only brilliant but … Read more
In part 1, I began to tackle the REThink Future program that is currently underway. I have posted Nicole-Anne Boyer’s gracious response to that post here. And now, we dive into the Scenarios themselves… because… well, because it’s fun for me. Let me reiterate my agreement with the idea that if the purpose of these scenarios is … Read more
I haven’t forgotten about the massive series on REThink Future I’m working on. Hell, at this rate, I should look for a publisher as it’s trending north of 15K words in multiple parts. In any event, Nicole-Anne Boyer, the Managing Director of Adaptive Edge — the company working with NAR on REThink Future — was … Read more
At Inman Connect this year, I was fortunate enough to be invited to participate in REThink Future, an initiative of NAR that attempts to open up the strategic planning process to the membership and to some non-members (like me). Given that I do strategic planning for a living, and given that I have a few … Read more
First, watch the video above. It’s my doppelganger Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist at NAR, explaining the 1.4% drop in June pending home sales. This comes on the heels of bad news about June released several days ago: June Existing Home Sales down 5.4% June New Home Sales down 8.4% And predictably, the media and various … Read more
My friend Eric Stegemann, a Millennial himself, tweeted out the following article from BusinessWeek talking about the “Lost Generation” of Homeowners: For some analysts, the scariest outcome of the collapsed home-price bubble is that it could turn an entire generation of would-be homeowners into perma-renters. Yale economist Robert Shiller floated the idea of a “lost … Read more
[Continuing my experiment on short posts… 600 words or less, guaranteed.] I’ve been sounding the alarm on the Millennials for… oh… over two years now, I guess, starting with this post in March of 2010. I noticed that even the mainstream media (like the LA Times) is starting to catch on to the fact that … Read more
Last year, I wrote that Realogy’s numbers looked pretty good to me, despite the fact that Realogy had lost $237m in Q1 of 2011. I figured I might as well dip back into that water since I’m interested in my old corporate home (I started my real estate career at Coldwell Banker Commercial), and well… I … Read more