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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tradelite who wrote (41557)	9/18/2005 9:16:36 AM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

What will realtors DO? I mean, even Mrs. Soprano is going for her realtor's lic., because she has no marketable skills! I think they should leave the realtors alone. It's the last stop on the white collar employment train.

To: Tradelite who wrote (41557)	9/18/2005 1:28:12 PM
From: Mick Mørmøny	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

U.N. sees urban housing crunch REUTERS September 18, 2005 UNITED NATIONS – Two billion more people will be moving into the world's already overcrowded cities over the next 25 years, requiring 4,000 new housing units per hour between now and 2030 to accommodate them, a U.N. agency said. Already 3 billion people, half the global population, live in urban areas, the U.N. Human Settlements Program UN-HABITAT said in a report which concludes the private sector alone will be unable to finance housing for everyone in need. While mortgage financing has expanded over the past decade and is available in a growing number of countries, it is mainly the middle and upper classes that benefit from mortgages, leaving the poor mainly on the sidelines, the report said. While a middle class is emerging or growing in many developing countries, including China and India, it is disappearing in other parts of the world such as sub-Saharan Africa, overtaken by poverty, UN-HABITAT said. The report calls on governments and financial firms to explore ways to help those living in poverty, including new subsidies, lending guarantees, microfinance and community-based financing schemes such as shelter community funds and savings and credit societies. There are also nonfinancial constraints to the purchase of housing that governments could help overcome including laws that make it difficult for buyers to use real estate as collateral for a loan, it said. Legal and institutional reforms are needed "to protect the rights of both lenders and borrowers as well as to enhance access to credit," the report said. The goal of such reforms is to create middle ground between the two extremes of current systems: "affordable shelter that is inadequate, and adequate shelter that is unaffordable," it concluded. signonsandiego.com

To: Tradelite who wrote (41557)	9/18/2005 2:07:02 PM
From: Mick Mørmøny	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Putting in a good word for real estate brokers By: TOM DURWOOD - For the North County Times The worst real estate agent I can remember was the second one my wife and I encountered. She was in Short Hills, N.J., and for some reason she insisted on leafing through her entire sales book, pitching us on using her firm, even after we had agreed to sign. The best? A North County real estate broker spent almost two years driving us around neighborhoods while we looked at scores of houses, bid on three, and finally bought one. When you factor in phone calls and coffee time, her commission probably paid her a little over minimum wage (a commission she offered to cut so we could make a deal on bid No. 3). The wife of another real estate agent helped us decorate the house and refused any payment. I like real estate agents. In this age of Internet home shopping and sell-it-yourself-for-1-percent, I declare myself in favor of real estate agents. For one thing, buying or selling a home is a high-stakes transaction for most families. Unless you've attended real estate seminars, you will need help with some phase or another of this process. The Internet is good for buying books, or CDs, or maybe a shirt ---- not houses. For another, a good agent should be able to earn their commission and more by helping set the price (or the buyer's bid), making sure the photo in the multiple listing looks sharp, tracking down property disclosures, or taking care of a hundred other details. The sales contract alone contains dozens of pitfalls for the uninitiated (like me). Real estate agents are getting a bad image these days. Blanche Evans, publisher of Agent News, feels there is a considerable anti-real estate agent bias in the media. The Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, Justice Department and the Financial Services Committee (which oversees banks) are seeking to more tightly regulate agents' policies on minimum service standards, referral fees, and online listings. Words like "cartel" and "stifling competition" are cropping up a lot. I'm sure real estate agents are vigorously protecting their turf, but last time I checked, getting a real estate license was open to the public. The big issue, of course, is fees. "The Realty Racket" is the title of a recent Wall Street Journal editorial that complains bitterly about brokers and their middleman profits. But comparing realty brokers to middlemen like travel agents or stockbrokers (who have seen their fees shrink dramatically) is comparing apples and oranges. All the real estate agents I have worked with earned their commission. And it seems to me that fees are already on the table ---- negotiable, that is ---- like just about everything else these days. Depending on the market and the level of service, you can work with a broker for 3 percent or 7 percent or anything in between. Evans quotes Washington broker Linda Hoffman, who says, "It seems these days that no matter where a Realtor or professional real estate agent looks ---- in print, online, or TV ---- that we are drawn, quartered and subjected to the old greed factor before we've ever even met!" One reason for this brave new "Who needs a real estate agent" attitude is the constant rise of the housing market. In the past five years, anything you buy goes up in value, so who cares if you pay a little more? Well, that world is about to change, and "For Sale By Owner"may not look so attractive when the market flattens out. Tom Durwood is a freelance writer. Contact him at Tbird3080@aol.com. nctimes.com