It would be helpful if the media and eggheads stopped talking about the national housing market. Just leave it to the REALTORS to talk to customers locally.

Could it be that the real estate crisis continues because the government thinks a housing crisis is a terrible thing to waste?

Fannie and Freddie committed the biggest taxpayer fraud in history. It’s time to put them away for good, and the head of their crime syndicate, HUD.

After two years of evidence that mortgage modifications don’t work, either to keep people in their homes or stabilize home prices, here are a few reasons why REALTORS might consider encouraging strategic defaults instead.

Steve Harney discusses Case Schiller's system of promoting trends - but not necessarily accurate - price reports.
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This week Fannie Mae, the government agency we love to hate, announced it would punish borrowers who strategically default on mortgages on non-performing housing assets. Funny how they didn’t mention their request for another $8.4 billion in taxpayer money last month.

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.

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?

Some questions Matthew Ferrara thinks REALTORS should be asking of FHA – before it’s too late.

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.

Bizarre, Cool, Finally and Funny: Observations from the NAR Annual Conference, 2009 Each year, as thousands of REALTORS descend upon some unsuspecting city in American, we bring you observations from the event, complete with raised eyebrows of all kinds. This year’s Annual Convention of the National Association of REALTORS in San Diego is no exception: the 14,000 vendors, agents and industry leaders left us with no lack of bizarre, cool, finally and funny observations to share with you. So, without further ado, here goes. Bizarre: Why do all of the REALTOR conventions happen in cities with soaring homeless rates? It seems the height of irony that so many “home ownership professionals” gather in San Francisco, San Diego, New Orleans and Washington DC – ostensibly to learn new ways to sell more homes – only to find themselves taking the bus from hotel to convention center because the streets are overcrowded with people – without homes. Now, this isn’t to suggest that real estate conventions should only be held in places with low homeless rates – say, a nice tropical island – but it is to say that maybe the “local tour of luxury homes” and “annual pean to hammer-swinging a [...]

Contrary to popular belief, money does not grow on trees. Likewise, the billions of dollars being fire-hosed from Washington into the housing industry don’t just run off the printing press for free. Tax credits for first time buyers some mean more taxes from others. The most likely amongst the others? Current homeowners, of course.

So the government has launched another wildly popular subsidy program with its Cash for Clunkers program, offering consumers up to $4500 for trading in their classic cars for purchasing a new one. In fact, the program is so popular that more than 250,000 trades have already been made and the original $1 billion earmarked by Congress spent in days. Uncle Sam will just request a credit increase on his credit card, though, potentially finding another $2 billion to keep the program going. Reasoning: trading in old cars for new ones creates consumption, which trickles-down income throughout the automobile industry network of suppliers and manufacturers. Plus, it preserves jobs and cleans the air. Never mind those trades going to “foreign” car companies,or that $1 billion is a pittance when spread across the automobile “industry.” Still, it got me thinking. Why not copy the Cash for Clunkers program and apply it to the housing industry by paying people to tear down their used homes?  

Yesterday, President Obama announced he was prepared to break the law. After blaming the senior debt bondholders of Chrysler for pushing the company into Chapter 11, he sanctioned a plan to abrogate their covenants and force them to take pennies on their loaned dollar. No matter that their bonds were secured by the company’s assets. The rights of “speculators” are easily swept aside in populist frenzies. Notice how the President didn’t blink a teleprompter-eye when he stood with the union workers, the families and the communities – while transferring to them 55% control of the company assets. American lenders filled with American workers who loaned American savings to Chrysler for decades were expected to simply take massive losses. Apparently it’s no longer American to repay one’s debts. The Bully Pulpit declared “needs” more important than “rights.” And since mere mortals barely understand all this financial jargon, especially  REALTORS, the rule of law was quietly killed. Contracts, it seems, aren’t worth the paper they’re written on in America. REALTORS had better beware.

Everyone knows about the 90/10 rule: 90% of the business is done by about 10% of REALTORS. Translated to a consumer experience, this means that most buyers and sellers have about a 1-in-10 chance of getting the “best performing” agent to sell their home or represent them in a purchase. Even a generous assessment of the business – quartiled for the top 25% of agents who generate more than $200,000 in commissions annually – leave the underperforming-bottom 75% of the business to muck up the works. And while banks, lenders, Fannie, Freddie, Frank and Dodd all share some blame for causing the current crisis, could it be that the “other” broken real estate market is the soft-underbelly of the brokerage industry itself? Do we really need to answer that?