Sunny Lereah now predicts a housing recession, hints that the NAR pressured him to lie, and now states that real estate clerks pushed the market to stray from the fundamentals and will now pay the price. Yup, for the first time ever, that appears to be the truth from TCDL.
In the end, I don't think someone so corrupt and so evil as TCDL can ever be redeemed - the damage he and the NAR caused is immense, and lives have been destroyed, but he's welcome to give it a shot. If he wants redemption, only the complete and total downfall of the NAR is acceptable.
Thanks twist for the lead. And nice to see the lazy Sun-Times FINALLY do some damned reporting for a change, versus rip and read from NAR press releases. Too bad it's too late though.
Housing cheers turn gloomy
Long criticized as too upbeat, Realtors' departing economist now sees recession
On his way out the door, the housing industry's self-described "cheerleader" is making one last economic forecast -- a sober one at that.
"We're in a real estate recession," said David Lereah, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, who surprised many this week when he announced he would leave the Chicago-based trade group on May 19."I'm projecting the first [nationwide] price drop since the Great Depression," he said. "We're going to have negative home prices in 2007."
His comments seemed uncharacteristic for Lereah, whose mostly blue-sky forecasts have long been criticized for stoking the fire as home sales bubbled to stunning -- and unsustainable, even by his own account -- levels. He had been the public face for the Realtors since the housing boom began in 2001.
"The media regularly turns to him for real estate quotes," said David Jackson, who created the hypercritical David Lereah Watch blog because he believed the economist was churning the housing market. "Lereah tells half-truths and manipulates facts and figures. He cannot be trusted, as he is a paid shill."
"He promotes housing," said Washington economist Dean Baker, an outspoken housing-market bear. "Certainly, people who were making decisions to move, they either heard David directly or from someone who heard from David that home prices will never fall, don't worry, the market will stay strong. So they paid too much for a house."
Lereah, in an interview Wednesday, shrugged off the criticism. "I feel confident I did a very good job forecasting and reflected what was happening in the marketplace," he said."But the Realtor, the lender, the title attorney, they all got wrapped up in the frenetic pace of the boom," Lereah said.
Lereah is leaving the Realtors to head a new subsidiary of Move Inc., which operates online real estate services, including the industry's most popular site, Realtor.com, for the NAR. He and others in the company declined to discuss the venture until it debuts in August.But first he has one more public appearance, at a Realtors' conference in Washington.
He warns that his speech will not be cheery."I am going to say, look, guys, we all have to face the music," Lereah said. "We strayed from [economic] fundamentals, and we're paying for it. It's not an all-out bust, not a crash in real estate, but it is a recession. This is going to cleanse the markets and in the long term this is what we have needed."
In characteristic cheerleader style he demurred when asked whether he ever felt pressure from within NAR to skew forecasts in a positive direction."You'll have to talk to me about that in two or three weeks," Lereah said. "I work for NAR now."
23 comments:
David Lereah is a doom and gloom kook. Housing will keep increasing by 12% a year for the next few years then it will return to the normal 20% annual gains. It's in the bag
Keith,
It is as though you have a crystal ball. Your April 1 joke as it would seem might have been a vision of things to come.
This clown hyped the housing market like Ken Lay hyped Enron stock to his own employee's.
I remembered how funny it was when the cheerleaders in high school use to cheer and scream and hype their team....even when they we're losing Badly!!!!!
Wow TCDL speaks the truth (sort of); that must be one of the signs of the end times.
Well if he is now calling recession that must mean that depression 2.0 has just begun. These are strange days indeed people.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/06/1006/
People are starting to get it. However, people in Northern VA/DC are taking longer than most...sigh..
I can't help but think that TCDL is still blowing sunshine. He's spinning the data as much as he can and this is the best he can do.
He still thinks "We're going to scrape this bottom for the next quarter or two. [The market isn't] going to come roaring back soon. It will take a couple of years to get back to the heat."
Well, it's going to be more than a quarter or 2 of scraping the bottom - we'll be sliding towards it for the next several years. And there will be not 'heat' for us to get back to.
Lereah is still a lying sack.
This is just a cheap attempt to cover his ass so when it blows up he can say "see I told you it was going to end badly. I am not a total tool" It is aproaching the end and he sees that and is jumping while he still thinks he can.
Retibutive justice for TCDL:
1. Step down. (check)
2. Recant (check?)
3. Become a HPer...
How quickly he turns. He should be hanged.
He is in too deep for forgiveness from myself and 99% of the population.
But at least by admitting he was a shill and stating the truth, he can take the first step towards being able to face himself in the mirror again.
Can any realtrolls answer this simple question:
Why did New Century go bankrupt if housing prices are still going up? Shouldn't they have been able to take those foreclosures and sell them for a profit or at least break even after foreclosure costs?
In terms of what the Lereah and the NAR knew in aug 06 vs what they publicly said at the time, I'd say this powerpoint presentation delivered by Lereah at a NAR leadership conference is fairly damning.
http://tinyurl.com/mefvp
Not surprising, as you'd expect a sales organization to, uh, "sell". The old, "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" stuff. However, they also go to great lengths to prattle on and on about their integrity, and how they deserve the public's trust. Poppycock, I say.
It seems their conclusions in Aug 2006 were more optimistic than warranted, as they completely missed the credit tightening that followed sub-prime meltdown (although the slides do indicate warning signs, like the rising number of investors in the market, and the growing number of toxic loans, etc).
The subprime meltdown seems to have been the "loose tile on the space shuttle" that will have far more damaging effects than the threats they seemed more concerned with (e.g. Feds raising interest rates too rapidly). Silly, as in the market frenzy one of the factors LEAST concerning to buyers was stuff like interest rate: as long as they could borrow, they didn't care about factors like rates (or even whether they could afford the house, once run-away house appreciation was removed from the equation).
RE: David Lereah, chief economist of the National Ass. of Realtors, admits that he's full of shit as a Christmas goose.
Even as I was reading the article from the Chicago Tribune, the whole thing seemed like a Twilight Zone episode.
It was like reading a twisted, perverted parody.
V.L.
You know
I just heard from a San Diego friend tonight there's a bar in Tiajuana famous for it's donkey show. See, some gal gets done by
anyways
In some way shape or form David Learah's knowledge of economics served the public in a like fashion.
The big investment banks probably gave him a sizable chunk of Google's ipo in exchange for his constant schilling.
the con continues. tcdl is still just playing his role.
I can't believe that the entire real estate industry (with the team leader David Lereah ), could go unchecked for this many years .
Now when the brainwashing of the public is no longer viable ,in part because of a call for a sib-prime bail-out ,David Lereah thinks now is the time for the housing recession call .
The RE industry helped drive the real estate prices to amounts that should of taken another 15 years to get to (given normal inflation ).This guy thinks he gets to just walk away and leave a damaged market that is no different than the aftermath of a hurricane .
If I hear another real estate agent saying that its just a matter of sellers listing at the right price ,I'm going to vomit .
There is alot of damage that has been done here and as far as I am concerned the realtors didn't earn the right to now make a ton of money on the down-side of this crash coming .
Any realtor that put a nice young couple into a house they couldn't afford , by turning them on to a scum loan agent during the housing boom ,you can go to hell .
Did you as a realtor promise that nice young couple that they could refinance out of that toxic loan knowing that nobody can promise money being available in the future ?
Did you as a realtor promise that real estate always goes up and that nice young couple had to buy now or be priced out forever because we are running out of land .
Did you ever once tell that nice young couple that they could not afford current prices ? No ,you encouraged that couple to commit fraud with that scum loan agent you run your liar loan to .
Did you ever once feel quilty went you told some stupid brainwashed borrower that they could not afford not to buy ?
To bad you people in the real estate business didn't decide to let the market correct in 2002 as it should of so that you could of have a nice sustainable business years into the future .You people knew the loan agents and borrowers were commiting fraud and you were the set-up people .
I'm amazed that sellers or buyers even talk to you guys at this point but as long as you guys can come up with new lies you figure you can make money on the down-turn . You people didn't put people into homes ,you created a new breed of homeless and perhaps you will see soup lines because of your greed .
Class action lawsuit against David Learah.
You know, I am disgusted as anyone by the rampant greed that has infected the housing market but I'm starting to feel sorry for this Lereah guy. Sure, he pumped his industry. That was his JOB. How many of you out there say things you don't believe, do things you don't believe in, for a paycheck? I'm guessing it's a lot of you (us).
Nobody forced anyone to pay 300K for a house that was 100K 5 years ago. Surely you don't think this guy, who very few people even know who he is, was capable of creating the housing hysteria of the last 5 years?
He's not evil, he's just an American, doing the job he was paid to do.
Hey, Keith:
Write up a feeler for David Learah to bring him onboard as HP's "special consultant". Send it and see what kind of reaction you get.
He's not evil, he's just an American, doing the job he was paid to do.
Yes and Otto Ohlendorf was just a German doing the job he was ordered to do.
Sorry but that line of excuse has been dismissed already, his mom might buy it but it won't sell in a courtroom.
In related news, scientists reported that the flight of pigs, once ridiculed by the masses as being a wholly proposition, is, indeed, feasible. In fact, the U.S. Air Force recently awarded Lockheed Martin a $500 Million contract to conduct further studies.
I'm thinking Ron Paul for President is kookier than Lereah. According to Paul 911 was OUR fault.
I've been through a few of these things, beginning in the 70's. Most of you likely don;t remember 17% mortgage rates, or 14% VA loans with 10 "points," circa 1981 - 1982. The sky was going to fall in them too.
What about the banking melt-down in the early 1990s, after an over-heated speculative mid to late 80's real estate boom.
Remember the tech boom? Stupid mom and pop investors throwing billions and billions at unworkable technology and hypothetical business models, with attached Harvard and Wharton MBAs promoting them?
It's all about individual and collective greed. What seller doesn't want to get the highest price?
Capital is attracted to returns. When the prime was 1% large capital investors were looking for better returns. The stock market was stagnant, so higher yields meant higher risks. That's why "sucker rate" and negative amortization ARMS came into being. To allow the average person to be able to join the speculation. Even when told the truth about their loans they were "starry-eyed" about the millions they expected to reap in the real estate business.
You forget easily the stories of bellhops turned real estate moguls; buying 3 condos and flipping them to make $600,000 in a year and a half; then writing a book, and developing the new Carlton Sheets "Get Rich" program.
Everyone was involved. A friend of mine bought $5 million in options, and would brag about how much money he's making. He's been hemorrhaging money for the last year. This guy is an astute executive with a long history of business success.
Now, everyone is yet a victim again. It's never a matter of PERSONAL responsibility when individuals make bad decisions. It's the lender's fault, the REALTOR's fault; it's always somebody else's fault.
There are one hundred men seeking security to one able man who is willing to risk his fortune.
John Paul Getty
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