It was the year of fear, which never materialized in the housing crash that Wall Street seemed to want so badly. Realty Times looks back on the funny, poignant, inspiring and maddening real estate events of 2006. Here are the highlights, in no particular order.

The Bubble Doesn't Pop

Despite media cheering on a housing bubble burst, real estate sales saw its third best year ever. While some areas, notably parts of California, Florida and Nevada, plummeted in value, others showed year-over-year increases in home prices and sales. Many feel that housing is still in a bubble that has yet to burst, including blogs specific to "the housing bubble." The National Association of Realtors (NAR) says that it sees a new trend developing. While sales are 10 percent below last year's levels, they rose in October and November, suggesting that home sales are recovering from the fast exist of speculators and homebuyers with risky, exotic home mortgage products that reset, making payments unaffordable.

Wall Street Greed Hits New High

No wonder stocks did so well in 2006. CEO's kept pesky employee pay raises below inflation (partly by lobbying Congress to fail at passing the minimum wage increase, which hasn't been raised in 10 years, by the way.) Meanwhile, they took hefty pay raises and bonuses for themselves.

While the average Joe lost retirement, paid more for prescriptions and dug himself deeper into debt, the "average CEO of a Standard & Poor's 500 company made $13.51 million in total compensation in 2005, according to an analysis by The Corporate Library," says union watchdog AFLCIO.org .

To put that into perspective, in 1980 CEOs made about 42 times the average worker's salary. By 2000, CEOs made 525 times the average workers salary. A stock market bust followed, but CEO salaries are creeping back into the stratosphere. In 2005, the average CEO earned 411 times more than the average worker.

What's amazing is that stockholders are stupid enough to put up with it, but that won't last much longer, we hope.

After years of drumming on housing to scare investors into moving their money back into stocks, the ploy pays off. Stocks hit record highs in December 2006, just in time for executive bonus season. Get ready to sell your stocks off again, because the execs have taken all the profits for themselves, not the investors. As soon as the public realizes they've been had once again, money will drain out of stocks and back into housing. Housing boom, anyone?

Case In Point: Home Depot's CEO Steps Down The Ladder

With pay and severance packages so good, CEOs hardly have to answer to shareholders while on the job. Home Depot's Bob Nardelli accepted a $210 million package including $20 million in severance after quitting in a huff over investor outrage over his pay. Home Depot's stock has been down a split-adjusted three percent since Nardellli took over in 2000.

Crooked Corporate Leaders Get Comeuppance

Many rejoiced when former Realtor.com CEO Stuart Wolff was convicted in June 2006 of conspiracy and insider trading. He's was sentenced to a relatively merciful 15 years and asked to repay $5 million to investors. He's appealing his conviction. Also facing the music is Fannie Mae's former CEO Franklin Raines, who's accused of masterminding and/or condoning the coverup of a 3 1/2 year-long, $9 billion shortfall that forced Fannie Mae to restate enough earnings to wipe out 40 percent of profits from 2001 to mid-2004. Raines and others were sued by the Office of Federal Housing and Enterprise Oversight "to extract more than $215 million in bonus payouts and fines over their involvement in huge-scale accounting scandal; regulator is seeking about $100 million in penalties; its effort to recoup more than $115 million in bonus payments."

Best NAR Convention Ever

According to Frank Sibley, senior vice president of NAR's Communications and Convention Group, the November 2006 "NARdigras" brought about $40 million in economic activity to recovering New Orleans. The convention was a success with 4,560 more attendees than in 2002, and an all-time exhibitor high of 630 booths. "This is my 9th year running the NAR Convention group -- I don't recall receiving more compliments from members for sticking with N.O. and the overall attendee satisfaction with the event," says Sibley.

What made the convention for most attendees was seeing Presidents George H. Bush and Bill Clinton, as well as hearing spectacular music from native son Harry Connick, Jr. Most Realtors commented to Sibley and others that they also felt good about contributing to NOLO's recovery.

The Flip Side: FEMA To The Rescue

Debit cards issued to hurricane victims of Katrina and Rita weren't always used to satisfy "legitimate disaster needs," such as food, shelter and clothing. Federal auditors found purchases on the cards including a $200 bottle of champagne from Hooters and $300 worth of "Girls Gone Wild" videos. Federal monies also paid for diamond jewelry, a vacation to the Dominican Republic, strip clubs, and $1000 went to a Houston divorce lawyer, said the Government Accountability Office audit.

The GAO also found that FEMA provided housing assistance to people who were not displaced, including at least 1,000 prison inmates, and also provided rental assistance to people who were simultaneously living in free hotel rooms, said a news report. In addition, FEMA lost track of about 750 debit cards, worth a total of $1.5 million. Half of those were accounted for, but about $760,000 worth of cards have yet to be found. About 16 percent of people applying for disaster relief weren't displaced or affected by the storms, the GAO found.

Biggest Emerging Threat to Real Estate Agents

As an agent, if you've ever steered a customer away from a home or neighborhood because of the schools, you may be the next target of fair housing advocates who claim that real estate agents are using schools as "code" that allows them to racially discriminate. Claiming that whites are steered to white neighborhoods and blacks and Latinos are steered to mixed-race neighborhoods using schools as "good" (less integration) or "bad" (more integration), groups like The National Fair Housing Alliance are paying "testers" to find agents who discriminate and get fair housing violations charged against them.

This is significant because schools are among the top reasons buyers choose neighborhoods.

Blanche's Year

Ok, it's a shameless plug, but she deserves it. Our hard-working editor Blanche Evans wrote three books, keynoted numerous real estate events, and still found time to work her day job at Realty Times.

Blanche's award-winning book Bubbles, Booms and Busts: How to Make Money In Any Real Estate Market , McGraw-Hill, was reviewed in the New York Times and made Bob Bruss' Ten Best Real Estate Books of 2006 .

She also wrote two books for the National Association of Realtors, The National Association of Realtors Guide to Home Buying and The National Association of Realtors Guide to Home Selling , Wiley & Sons, both of which are doing well, according to NAR spokespersons.

In addition, Blanche made Realtor Magazine's "25 Most Influential People In Real Estate" list of notables for the third time in a row. She was also featured in Donald Trump's new book as one of 100 real estate experts giving Trump:The Best Real EState Advice I Ever Received."

Her speaking engagements for franchise organizations, Realtor associations, and MLSs are getting rave reviews, particularly "The Conspiracy To Put You Out of Business and What You Can Do About It," and "How You Can Win The Commission Challenge." Call Blanche at 214-353-6980 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Realty Times' Writers Get Their Due

Realty Times' columnist David Reed is also a prolific writer of consumer mortgage books. His book Who Says You Can't Buy A Home, Amacom, got rave reviews (Top Ten) from Bob Bruss. Ralph Roberts is heating up the real estate section of the "Dummies" franchise, with "Flipping For Dummies, and his upcoming book Flipping Foreclosures For Dummies. Dirk Zeller's book The Champion Real Estate Agent is breaking sales records, too. Mark Nash , author of 1001 Tips for Buying and Selling A Home is a self-promoter who's landed on The Early Show, as well as other media outlets.

And to think, these great writers are among nearly 50 who contribute free advice to our readers.

Can't This Guy Hold A Job? Award

In January 2006, Realty Information Systems, Inc. dba Help-U-Sell® Real Estate tapped Steve Ozonian as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer. Prior to joining Help-U-Sell, "Ozonian held key senior positions spanning all aspects of the homeownership industry," said the euphemistic press release, which stopped short of including the dates of Ozonian's brief tenures with Global Mobility Solutions, National Home Ownership Executive for Bank of America, RE/MAX International, and REALTOR.com, all held since 2000. Before that he held "top positions at Prudential Real Estate and Coldwell Banker and a division of Chicago Title and Trust."

Wonder if he gets a cut of his executive placement fees?

Worst Security Breach: Choicepoint consumer data

Consumers still don't get how vulnerable they are to data thieves. In 2006, Choicepoint, Inc., a data warehouser agreed to pay the Federal Trade Commission $15 million to settle charges that its "security and record-handling procedures violated consumers' privacy rights and federal laws," said the Associated Press. "The data breach involved thieves posing as small business customers who gained access to ChoicePoint's database or about 163,000, and over 750 people were defrauded." In related news, the SEC is examining stock trades by Derek Smith, ChoicePoint's chief executive officer, and Doug Curling, chief operating officer, who made a combined $16.6 million in profits before the security breach was made public.

Home De Pot

According to news reports, contractors who bought their supplies from Home Depot stores in Massachusetts got more than they bargained for. One discovered two 50-pound "bricks" of marijuana (street value: $145,000) stashed inside a bathroom vanity he had purchased from a Tewksbury store. A plumber purchased a vanity in western Massachusetts which was found to contain 3 kilograms of cocaine and around 40 pounds of marijuana, with a total estimated street value of $250,000. Other complaints were made across the state.

The She's-A-Pistol Award

Get more bang for your advertising buck. That's what Texas real estate agent Julie Upton thought she would do by offering Houston-area law enforcement personnel a free Glock pistol if they bought a home from her. She advertised the pistol incentive in the department's monthly newsletter "Badge & Gun," and by the time the story hit the wires, she had already given away at least two pistols to police officers who purchased homes using her as their agent. The guns cost about $500. In Texas, reported Reuters, "no license is required to own a rifle, shotgun or handgun, but a permit is needed to carry a concealed weapon, according to the National Rifle Association."