I’ll be spending all day today and tomorrow attending a pair of local real estate events. Today is the Pacific Northwest Housing Summit, at which a distinguished panel of industry insiders will be discussing the current market, the future of the market, and probably a bunch of sales tactics for sellers of various real estate services to make as much money as they can in any market.
Among the “Dignitaries and Special Guests” (that’s the language straight from the program) presenting today are a variety of economists, mortgage, title, escrow, and of course salespeople, including J. Lennox Scott, to whom Jillayne has promised she will personally introduce me.
I’ll be reporting later today or tomorrow on what Lennox and the other prognosticators here today are saying about where the market is headed (I bet we can all make a pretty good guess about what they’ll be saying).
Tomorrow’s event is the Seattle Real Estate BarCamp, which is free and open to absolutely anyone. I attended this last year, and it was definitely interesting.
The thrust of the event seems to be focused on real estate agents and other industry professionals connecting with each other and sharing strategies for using the internet and social media, but the event is mostly unstructured, and anyone can hold a session during the day on basically any real estate related topic.
If you’ve got anything that you’d like me to pass on to the industry insider crowd, drop it in the comments here. Also, you are welcome to come join me tomorrow at the Seattle Center Northwest Rooms if you have any interest in spending all day with a bunch of agents and listening to them try to figure out how to connect to consumers and what they want. Or just come back here sometime early next week and read my report.
“If you’ve got anything that you’d like me to pass on to the industry insider crowd, drop it in the comments here.”
Please ask the “professionals” their opinions on:
1. The ramification on the local real estate market in/re to strategic default and short sales incessantly pounding our inventory. Find out what they believe homeowners who purchase in 2010 will see in appreciation of home values.
2. Please ask Lennox Scott his opinion of homeowners who walk away from their debts due to being upside down tremendous amounts of money. Does he encourage home owners to STAY in their homes and pay when they can rent the same home for 1/2 the price.
3. Please ask the professionals their opinions of Meredith Whitney’s forecast of a very sizable double dip in housing prices in the coming years.
4. Please ask the opinions of the Professionals on The Fed stimulation of the markets and have they initiated another housing bubble that cannot be sustained without further Fed Stimulation. Please get their opinion of what will happen as rates rise, stimulus is pulled, and people remain upside down.
5. Also, don’t forget to wear your 500 Realty T Shirt. You will garner tremendous respect from all that surround you.
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“If you’ve got anything that you’d like me to pass on to the industry insider crowd, drop it in the comments here.”
Kick J.L Scott in the nuts for me :)
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Just overheard (going from memory here so not word-for-word)…
JLS: “Were you here for the morning session?”
attendee: “Yes. It wasn’t very uplifting.”
JLS: “Well, we’ll see what I can do to fix that.”
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Ask Them Why We Should Assume Low Interest Rates Through 2010 are a Done Deal
When Kiplinger’s April 2010 magazine specifies an unplugging fed life support after April, and not just tax credits, fed support of treasuries buying too. Tell them Kiplinger predicts a half point increase in mortgage rates after April 2010.
You might end your question, “Who the hades is telling the truth and why should I believe them?”
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RE: The Tim @ 3 –
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. negative tone it appears.
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Ray,
How dare you suggest a bias :) Only agents have bias…here.
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“Local Real Estate Insiders Brainstorm the Market”
And they are all using one brain.
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RE: pfft @ 7 –
“Local Real Estate Insiders Brainstorm the Market”
I like both of these:
Kick J.L Scott in the nuts for me.
And they are all using one brain.
Go Huskies!
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We need more of those “overheard” tidbits. Make us feel like we’re really there.
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I think if you want to sound like a smart in-the-know realtor on top of the market you just say you’ve seen an increase in open house traffic. housing bulls will love it, reporters don’t want to argue with someone so close to the market and the bears won’t care anyway. guess who matters? the reporter. after all, he doesn’t want to lose his only source.
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By pfft @ 7:
I forecast scattered light drizzle with only a trace of accumulation.
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I wish their website was better maintained. I went to look to see what the scheduled topics were, but other than the keynote, I saw nothing.
I was very interested in going if it was about Realtors, agents and professionals leveraging social media in market, as it’s an aspect I’m extremely interested in. I’m building a new business for full-motion video tours of real estate for delivery across multiple formats and would like to make connections if those were the topics discussed.
To the contributors, and editor, thank you for this blog. It has been extremely informational and I read every single day.
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RE: pfft @ 10 –
I like that. You don’t have to say whether open house traffic is up from a year ago or whether it’s up from two months ago, or whether it’s always up this month over previous months. Just say it’s up.
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RE: Ira Sacharoff @ 13 – It could be down, but its rate of decrese is up.
The Tim, for me it would be nice if you could encourage them to come here and participate.
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By singliac @ 9:
it’s more fun to make them up!
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By singliac @ 9:
Well I was updating the Twitter feed most of the day, which posts to the sidebar on the front page, and will post in the link roundup as usual Saturday morning.
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Tim- It was good to see you yesterday at the Real Estate Bar Camp. Were you involved in any of the discussions or just lurking? I tried to get you to share your thoughts during Spencer Rascoff’s discussion, but you seemed hesitant which is too bad. Obviously, there was a good sized room interested in sharing perspectives about the future of the local market and no one was shy about looking at and talking about real data.
Cherry picking JL Scott’s quotes and ridiculing them seems easy enough, but neither he nor his detractors seems to be moving the conversation forward in a meaningful way.
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