“Opportunity Knocks”

[lindismith]

This firm, Realogy, took out a full page ad in USA Today, talking up the ‘great opportunity to buy right now.’

They are basically urging consumers to buy because interest rates are down. Further, they are urging all their real estate customers (and competitors!) to start campaigns of the same sort. Why would any company start a massive campaign like this now? What a waste of money!

From the press release/news article:

“Although the media has focused on the downside of the changing real estate market, there are also compelling messages about real estate that we need to reinforce to consumers,” such as the recent drop in mortgage rates.

http://www.rismedia.com/index.php/article/articleview/16231/1/1/

How do these people write this BS? And worse, after a summer of rising media attention to the bursting bubble of the RE market, does he really think an ad campaign can beat the word on the street?

On top of that, isn’t he just asking to be sued??? I mean, isn’t it better to just recognize that the glory days are over, hunker down, and go into cya mode?

Check out their website too, but beware of the extremely lame audio tagline.
http://www.realogy.com

Oh, and don’t get me started on the name of their biz. Realogy???

[waiting hawk]

awesome, everyone back in the pool.

Until 30-40% of all buyers from 05 (speculators) join back into the game I’m not worried. After all, this market is soooo bad but the funny thing is that’s all who stopped buying. There is no magical fence buyers are sitting on.

Edit: I love this part, “[rates are] allowing home buyers to save more than $1,500 per year.” shoot I’m saving 10k a month in reductions. No thx.

My website tracking Inland Empire

[powayseller]

A realtor told me today that as soon as prices drop a little more, the sales will really pick up. There is so much pent-up demand, he said. His buyers are waiting on the sidelines, but it’s interesting: the same buyers waiting in the spring for prices to drop said they’d buy in July; in July they said they’d buy in September, and now they say they’ll buy next spring. I told him that buyers are holding out, so the lower prices go, the fewer people will buy because they wait to see how much lower prices will go. He quickly interrupted me to remind me of the pent-up demand. This guy is bearish, too. I think it’s hard to be impartial when you’re a realtor. They either believe you can be safe by buying “superior properties”, or that prices will fall for another year or two but only a little bit and then will pick back up again, or they say there’ll be a spring rebound, etc. He tried to talk me into getting a realtor license to give me creditbility for my website, but I think having a realtor license would make me less credible, and more of a salesperson. I still haven’t found a realtor who wants to face the reality.

[lindismith]

I think the realtors on this board are pretty realistic. Yeah, a year ago, some were saying “things will level out” but they’re not now. Now, they’re just as interested as we are to see how low things will go.

Keep in mind, it’s a realtor’s job to stay optimistic. They’re salespeople. They have to. And, people are going to buy houses during a down-turn. It’s inevitable – divorce, or job relocation, or kids, or whatever. Opportunity’s knocking for someone surely 😉

[powayseller]

Yes, the realtors who regularly post here are realistic.

[Anonymous]

THE 4 THINGS THAT MAKE REAL ESTATE GO OR STOP-
It’s all about these four points- fear, greed, supply and demand. Here’s how it used to work….Buyers feared they would miss the bus and so paid outrageous prices, sellers were greedy ( I’ll hold out for an outrageous price), the supply was depressed by a restrictive & dysfunctional building/new lot approval process. The demand was fueled by cheap interest rates and loose credit approvals. Hence, the bull market in residential Real Estate.
Now the opposite is true…buyers are fearfull they are paying too much, sellers are still unrealistic & greedy. The supply has doubled as late comers crowd the market and the supply of new lots and built out housing has peaked. Demand appeares to slow, even though there is still absorbtion, due to the huge increase in choices for potential buyers.
Things will work themselves through, but we have another 20-25% decrease to go!( buckle your seat belts!) One indicator that was largely ignored in the pre-boom period, was the number of new building lots in the pipeline. If you see a substantial decrease there….look out when the available lots are used up and there are no more to be had. ( i.e. a repeat of 1999-2000) This is an flag that could indicate a resurgance in the market.

[Bugs]

I think the PR thing might actually be a feeble attempt to counteract the media’s impact on buyer psychology. A lot of the bulls have been complaining about how all the negative talk actually pushes the market into a self-fulfilling decline.

Funny, I never heard them say anything about media influence when the market was on it’s way up – they swore it was the fundamentals driving those increases. I always thought the fundamentals come into play more heavily in corrections than in distortions, but what do I know?

I think you can skip the indirect indicators. An absorption of 15,000 of the current listings should be all the warning a prospective buyer would need to recognize a turn in the market. By the time the masses have figured out that RE is a good buy, most of the playahs on this board will already be two steps out in front.

[rankandfile]

I was speaking with a young realtor today. We didn’t intend to speak about housing, but it veered that way when he mentioned that he was looking to renew his real estate license. I said something to the effect that the times are getting tougher and tougher for realtors (I have no shame). I qualified it by saying that these days are tougher compared to a few years ago when you plopped a sign in the front yard and the property sold in a couple days.

He retorted that this was a good time to buy because of the lower interest rates. I really get a kick out of statements like that. I basically said to him that I don’t quite agree with that statement and he backed off a bit by saying that it was at least better than when interest rates were higher. He also conceded that prices HAD to come down because they were out of control.

[Author]

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