With our sensors on full, we’ve scanned the real estate metaverse online to find some of the latest links to research, industry thinkers and opinion that can help you chart a course to success in 2010.

In Part 1, we started the countdown towards May 1, the Day After. In Part 2, we offer ten suggestions for REALTORS to stay in business when the dust settles.

If the housing market fell nearly 17% the month after the original housing tax credits were supposed to end, what’s going to happen when they really do come to an end? Are REALTORS ready for the Day After?

FHA is about to change the rules for backing future loans. Will REALTORS be ready when the government-backed subsidies get harder to come by?

The real estate and mortgage industries are paying the price for Fannie Mae’s free-lunch fraud. Looks like the people who couldn’t afford “affordable housing” most weren’t just consumers, but its most vocal advocates.

Considering how notoriously misleading the Case-Shiller report is,does anyone wonder why buyers and sellers don’t believe a word of their REALTORS’s advice?

Why is it impossible for anyone – REALTORS, banks, media or economists – to accurately describe what is going on in the marketplace? If buyers are going to feel confident about moving back into the market, we should expect all of these groups to be providing clear, verifiable market facts that back up the “best time to buy” sloganism thrown at consumers. Yet most of the punditry has left consumers – especially skeptical Gen X’ers and impressionable Gen Y’ers – more confused than ever. And with a few trillion extra dollars sloshing around the economy and gas prices already moving higher nationwide, time is running out to make the clear-minded case that, by next year, real estate will be back to a “bad” investment once inflation roars back. Subtract the free-Federal-money for first-timers and add in a few million FHA loans that are about to default, and we’re actually on the verge of destroying the near-historic affordability levels once again. Instead we’re left with “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” proclamations from questionable analysts, partial data, a local appraiser and a journalist. We’d probably be better assessing market conditions with a Barney-Frank-roll-of-the-dice.

Like a three ring circus, the housing bill distracts the American taxpayer with shiny baubles. Behind the scenes however, the bill will likely destroy the housing industry and the careers of millions of REALTORS. Yet the moths continue to fly toward the fire, praising the insidious federal policy of giving away down-payments to buyers, forcing banks to write down mortgage principle, and protecting non-paying borrowers. All this , and more, just to set the stage for the big act: Commission caps for REALTORS. Really. Haven’t Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac done enough harm already? Remember Barney Frank’s “roll the dice” policy of funding credit-less borrowers? Not any more. Faster than slippery snakes shedding their skin, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s political patrons have shifted the media’s attention towards “evil bankers” whose Vegas junkets on corporate jets were the real cause of the current recession. This is not to say that bankers were asleep at the wheel during the credit boom, but they are taking their lumps in devastated stock prices today. We should not forget, however, that Congress put up the Big Tent under the name of “Everyone has a Home” and gave out tickets with cheap Greenspan money. Pointing [...]

Over the weekend, the United States government tried to correct one mistake with another: Under intense pressure from foreign governments – especially the Chinese government who are the single largest investor in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – Uncle Sam took out its checkbook. With a flourish of the pen, the Treasury nationalized these failing financial behemoths. In the process, it wiped out any remaining common shareholder value, eliminated stockholder control over the company’s operations and fired (but will still pay millions in golden parachutes) one of the most inept management teams in the history of any undertaking. In yet another stunning example of crisis management, lack of planning, and most of all – lack of leadership control of an organization – a pillar of both the real estate industry and the global economy itself crumbled. If the situation sounds a little too familiar to you, perhaps you’re wondering: Where’s my government bailout?

Real estate professionals should be upset today. A terrible blow for the integrity of the real estate industry – for housing as a foundation of personal equity and wealth, for the rule of law in mortgage lending, for simply doing good for ordinary Americans – has just been dealt by the government. A so-called “great compromise” has just laid $300 billion – financed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – in bad debt at the footstep of the taxpayer. According to the Wall Street Journal: The legislation combines the regulatory reforms for government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with a proposal to use the Federal Housing Administration to offer up to $300 billion in federal guarantees to help refinance struggling borrowers into new mortgage loans. One compromise proposal discussed last week would use the money from an affordable housing fund created from Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s earnings to help pay for the FHA guarantee program.