The first segment of Tuesday’s speech in Mission Valley, with 700+ realtors filling up this ballroom (and two other auxiliary rooms), at $25 per person, lunch included. This youtube clip was taken with a hand-held camera while standing in back – it’s shaky so you may want to listen to audio only:
Ahhh. turns out it was all a big misunderstanding. There was this “credit bubble” thingee detectable only in hindsight. Folks getting $1M loans with zero down may not have been completely forthcoming on their loan applications …. Who knew!?!
Then there is his dismissive hand waving as he mentions that prices may be down as much as 40% before quickly moving on to the fabulous price appreciation that today’s saavy buyers will enjoy over the next year.
Was the lunch at least decent?
I saw his lips moving but…
I think I’m going to hurl…
Did you guys know we are in a new bull market according to the pros.Goldman sachs has been pumping stocks for weeks.Stock prices to the moon.I wonder what their short psotions like like now.I bet they made a bundle on the alcoa downgarde this morning.Short the stock and then downgrade it, classic.
why does yun still have a job?
Jim, the video is not the only thing that is shaky… Yun should be arrested immediately and never mind the charges we can deal with them later… Maybe Suzanne is his Love Child after all? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubsd-tWYmZw
“I love that house, plus the schools”
“See the size of that garage”
Dear Lawrence, You are a complete douche and a discredited bought and paid for hack. You and your ridiculous organization give decent people like Jim the Realtor a bad reputation. Give it up and try working for a living. The car wash is hiring and you just might qualify for a tire wiper position (with a little training and motivation)
Let’s see 700 sheep at $25 per head = $17, 500.00. That’s a lot of rice and beans, Jim.
PINOCCHIO
Bubbles do not come back in several years it takes many years for prices to come back. I’m still waiting for the stock market bubble to come back and make up for my $1million loss.
Real estate expert: S.D. at leading edge of recovery
By Roger Showley
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. August 19, 2009
The chief economist for the National Association of Realtors predicted yesterday that mortgage interest rates will rise to 6 percent next year but saw no evidence of a “double dip” in housing price declines.
Economist Lawrence Yun, keynoting the San Diego Association of Realtor’s regional real estate summit, said California and San Diego are at the leading edge of a real estate recovery, based on rising prices and sales.
He noted that demand locally is strong enough that there is just a 2½-month inventory of homes for sale. With construction running at a sluggish pace, he said a shortage could develop next year as buying interest picks up.
“Usually, there is a 5 percent or 10 (percent) to 15 percent recovery” in sales, he said. “That’s been the past, historic experience. California markets have seen a 50 percent increase and there have been some markets up 100 percent.”
Yun spoke to an overflow crowd of more than 700 local agents and other industry professionals at the Doubletree Hotel in Mission Valley.
Also on tap were the San Diego and state realty presidents, last year’s national association president and other speakers who all aimed to calm the jitters of agents and brokers wondering about the state of the economy and outlook for housing.
Acting like a psychiatrist speaking to his patients on the couch, Yun calmly covered many economic and political issues facing the nation’s real estate market.
He began with a confession about how he missed the real estate bubble of 2004-06. Surely, the system had enough checks and balances to avoid a runaway market, he thought at the time. “I was clearly wrong,” he said.
He said the mistake was in not realizing that lenders were indiscriminately handing out loans. But the situation became clear when he caught an HGTV interview of a young UCLA couple who had succeeded in buying a $1.5 million home with a view of the ocean.
“I was jealous!” Yun said, tongue-in-cheek.
Just two years ago this month, all started to unravel as homeowners holding subprime mortgages were unable to cover rapidly increasing monthly payments. Now, Yun said several California markets, including San Diego, are starting to recover as prices rise month by month and sales increase, sometimes 100 percent over last year’s levels. He said the monthly changes are more indicative of the future than comparisons to year-ago levels.
Yun said San Diegans should be thankful that they aren’t in Detroit, where homes are going for as little as $20,000 because of economic woes.
But in his presentation, he illustrated how San Diego had experienced a roller-coaster ride in housing prices — compared with the flat-line, no-change situation in Midwestern cities like Dayton, Ohio.
San Diego prices fell from the peak $517,500 in November 2005 down to $280,000 in January, and have risen to $320,000 as of July, according to MDA DataQuick.
“We are back to justifiable levels,” Yun said, adding that affordability is the best on record.
But nationally, he said, reports continue being issued that prices are expected to fall another 10 percent, though that may not apply to all areas of the country, especially in places where they never raced upward. He expressed concern that consumers will hear reports of further drops and will continue holding off buying and thus delay a housing recovery.
Prices are strongest in Pacific Coast states, he pointed out in one slide, helped along by what he called the “tipping-point phenomenon.”
“You had a bubble bust,” he said. “Nonhomeowners were reluctant to enter the market and are still cautious.”
But with word that buying is increasing, the fence-sitters “don’t want to be left out” and buying has become acceptable in such markets.
With the Federal Reserve’s very low short-term interest rates in force, mortgage interest rates have remained at historically low levels, currently between 5.2 percent and 5.5 percent for a 30-year, fixed-rate loan.
But come next year, Yun predicted that rates might rise to 6 percent or higher, if the Fed sees signs of inflationary pressures.
“That’s not good news,” Yun said, but he argued that 6 percent is better than much higher rates first-time buyers’ parents paid 20 or 30 years ago.
He also predicted that foreclosures will continue at high levels for the next 12 months because of the weak economy. But unlike last year, he said this year’s foreclosures are being snapped up in many markets, including San Diego.
That demand for low-cost distressed properties leads Yun to discount any chance of a “double-dip” in price drops caused by an excess of distressed properties for sale.
Noting the historically low levels of housing construction, Yun said it is possible spot shortages might develop in places like San Diego, where the inventory of homes for sale is only about 2½ months. He acknowledged that the shortage might be somewhat artificial, since many lenders are holding off marketing foreclosures in hopes that asking prices will rise.
“Lunch with LY.” “LY?” How do you pronounce that? 😉
Hey Rob you pronounce it like LIE
Is Yun an economist or a schill?
How can he dismiss his call on the bubble and use irrational lending as an excuse? Isn’t he suppose to monitor all aspects of the market?
If the NAR wants a cheerleader perhaps they should hire Paula Abdul. I’m sure that she’d make a better economist.
I personally believe, in general, we are at or close to the bottom. As Jim pointed out in a previous post, different individual markets and price points have wild variations as to whether or not they have bottomed, but a lot have.
Now, if this shadown inventory, particularly the pre-shadow inventory (properties in default that the banks haven’t foreclosed upon yet) ever show up for sale as REOs en masse, this may change. But if most of them (eventually) get loan mods and don’t redefault, we have bottomed folks.
Stand by for segment two from LY, he talks about the shadow inventory.
He’s a psychopath just like Obama and the Goldman Sachs gang of Geither, Bernake, Paulson, etc. DOUBLESPEAK EVERY TIME. Don’t stand in their way of their selfish progress or you will get runover!
This is analogous to a car mechanic not being able to determine if a car’s going to DIE 100 miles out. Why do these people still have a JOB?
What’s wrong with these type of people? Either these guys have had a lobodomy (tarded) or are lying through their teeth. When they say no one could’ve predicted this, that’s bull. I’m sure many people told Yun there was a HUGE bubble years before it popped. He ignored them for nefarious selfish purposes.
And why are people still listening to him? What kind of an organization keeps a person around who’s gotten it so wrong? What does it say about the people in that organization?
Dang it, I don’t have it on tape, but LY said that Fannie/Freddie officials have told him specifically that they are holding back properties from the open market.
‘I’m sure many people told Yun there was a HUGE bubble years before it popped. He ignored them for nefarious selfish purposes.’
What would you expect him to do, get up and tell everyone there is a massive bubble and everyone should immediately stop selling homes?
When your job is to sell lemonade… it’s always a good time to buy lemonade. Period. This is his job. It pays his bills and feeds his family.
Not defending him, just pointing out the predicament.
I suppose if he really cared about his fellow Realtors he could have warned them that the punch may be toxic, and to stop drinking it themselves.
However, I suspect that’s like telling the drunk guy at the bar he’s had too much to drink – it’s already too late, he’s not going to believe you. Party on!
NAR needs a spokesman.
Lawrence sees things so linear that there is no extra influence to his predictions. He sees sales or prices going up for five months in a row, and he calls it the trend, and that’s the end of it.
You never hear from any White House economists, they trot out the spokesman who helps interpret the data, and can handle the questions.
The economy is doing awesome.The govt has to give people money to buy new cars and homes.Where is all this money coming from?We are so in debt it is ridiculous.Aren’t you glad your taxpayer money is going to your neighbor to buy a new car?
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”
-Sinclair Lewis
This rightly sees a good bit of repetition at CR, and seems appropriate here.
He is an economist. Certainly NOT an exact science.
He doesn’t bother me in the least, but if policy is coming exclusively from what he thinks that’s a big problem. You’ll find many towns who use university economists to understand their economy. But it is clear whatever California has been doing isn’t working anymore.
I sense some people in the state do not understand that….yet.
Jim: re “NAR needs a spokesman”
they haven’t called you yet ? probably too much of a pay cut.
Peter Hong,
They can’t handle the truth! 🙂
Jim, love your followers!
That includes me too!
“Dang it, I don’t have it on tape, but LY said that Fannie/Freddie officials have told him specifically that they are holding back properties from the open market.”
If what you’ve said is true government is no longer representing the people.
The government hasn’t been representing the people for a long time, unfortunately.
What would you expect him to do, get up and tell everyone there is a massive bubble and everyone should immediately stop selling homes?
When your job is to sell lemonade… it’s always a good time to buy lemonade. Period. This is his job. It pays his bills and feeds his family.
Not defending him, just pointing out the predicament.
The self-interest reasoning is true of any job or person out there. It takes a ‘special’ person to lie/cheat like this. Can most people go up there and lie like that and destroy hundreds of thousands of lives and the economy?
The younger generation has a serious serious problem. Growing up in school (I’m 32), I saw the ‘leaders’ (the smart ones) always trying to con/trick the system to better themselves, with no thought about consequences to others or the long-term effect on the environment or system. Ask yourself why all of this is happening now, and not why it didn’t happen in the previous generations? Welcome to the pokemon / scoring points generation.
What we have is a integrity crises. The banking, financial, housing, economic, job, war/terrorism crises are just offshoots. Until we cleanse the system of dishonesty, the snowball is going to keep getting bigger and bigger until it smashes into a large obstacle at the bottom. People won’t learn until they starve.
Is all of this sustainable? Can we continue this path of material gluttony? So we reach a fork in the road and one path lead to an expanding material empire with continuous war and loss of liberties, whilst the other path leads to a beacon of light the whole world looks up to for leadership in freedom, liberty, and integrity.
Anyways, all of this is a reflection of values of the people of the country.
Check out the red button problem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T40QWrlGRiY
Bring back “LIEREAH”!!!!
@sdnerd – regarding NAR and their spokespeople – I make this point: NAR is a trade association, they are paid to be cheerleaders for the real estate industry, they are paid to protect the interests of the brokers in the industry. They are not a consumer protection agency.
Would anyone expect the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association to warn consumers of the risks of mad-cow disease?