A record number of more than 30,000 Realtors&Reg; and guests attended the National Association of Realtors annual meeting in Las Vegas this week. That's good news considering that many Realtors have had a tough year in 2007, despite NAR's calculation that 2007 will end as the fifth best year in sales in decades.
Among NAR's highlights:
Celebrating its first 100 years, NAR launched its Face of Real Estate, a mosaic of hundreds of thousands snapshots of working Realtors. These will be used in NAR's public awareness campaigns and other places. If you haven't added your photo yet, do so here.
Richard F. “Dick” Gaylord, a Realtor&Reg; from Long Beach, Calif., was installed as the 2008 president of the National Association of Realtors®. He comes with a long history of association service including past president of the California Association of Realtors and the same year was named CAR's "Realtor of the Year."
The NAR's newly appointed chief economist announced that while home prices are down almost two percent this year, many areas of the country including Salt Lake City and Austin, Texas, are seeing double-digit appreciation and other areas "from the Rocky Mountain states to Appalachia," have undervalued home prices.
NAR released the results of its 2007 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. Typically released in late summer, this year the annual report found that for-sale-by-owner transactions remain at record lows at 12 percent, the same percentage as in 2006.
NAR announced that the Pending Home Sales Index for September rose 0.2 percent to a reading of 85.7 from an index of 85.5 in August. It was 20.4 percent lower than the September 2006 level of 107.6. “Even with relatively low fourth quarter sales, 2007 will be the fifth highest year on record for existing-home sales. The median existing-home price in 2007 will have fallen by less than 2 percent from an all-time high set in 2006,” Yun said. Managing Director of Public Affairs Lucien Salvant pointed out to Realty Times that the Pending Home Index is forward-looking and becomes irrelevant as soon as sales are reported, which is one reason he among other NAR leadership is frustrated with media who overplay negative statistics and discount favorable numbers in order to scare consumers.
NAR leadership, including outgoing President Pat V. Combs performed a spoof on the hit TV show CSI, "dispatching her trusted advisors" to find out why homebuyers are "staying on the fence" despite "solid U.S. economic performance. Chief Economist Lawrence Yun, incoming President Dick Gaylord and others "reported" back that other national sales downturns were driven by broad economic problems, but not this year. Despite a "solid" economy, sales are slower but will still reach a fifth-year record, and home prices are remaining at near record highs. This suggests that the national media, misled "by a few vocal but misinformed analysts, have been painting the U.S. housing markets in the clutches of a meltdown, even though the facts paint a very different picture."
In addition, NAR launched a new campaign targeting buyers, urging them to get the facts.
For example, markets are local, the small decline in home prices nationwide is "no big deal" after years of rapid appreciation, and that subprimes is only about 10 percent of loans but are 40 percent of current foreclosures. Gross Domestic product is expected to be 2.8 percent and job growth will be 1.1 percent in 2008 after 2 million job gains in 2006. Inflation should remain under 3 percent. These are all good conditions for home buying.
Further, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has doubled its loan volume in the last 12 months, and is on track to reach some 240,000 borrowers in 2007, including 80,000 refinancings by borrowers with troubled subprime loans, said Fannie Mae at the Regulatory Issues Forum.
Published: November 19, 2007
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