FLASH: National Association of REALTORS reports home prices fall by biggest amount ever recorded. Lawrence Yun continues to have no credibility

Seriously, NAR, enough is enough. You have zero credibility. And every time you have Yun paraded out to spew more bullsh*t, you just look stupid. Even more stupid than you looked the day before.

PEOPLE OF AMERICA - DO NOT TRUST THE NAR OR ANY REALTOR ON COMMISSION. THEY ARE ENEMIES OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, AND SHOULD BE AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS.

Home Prices Post Steepest Drop in 26 Years

Single-family home prices dropped 7.7% in the first quarter in the largest year-over-year decline since the National Association of Realtors began reporting prices in 1982

Lawrence Yun, the chief economist of NAR, attributed much of the record decline to liquidity problems dragging down high-priced markets.

"These are highly unusual results because there were very few jumbo loan originations in the latest quarter," he said. "So sales are much slower in high-cost areas."

Here's the first realtor I've seen who has adopted the correct marketing strategy - just tell the damn truth

Now if he'd work for $30 bucks an hour to help find or sell a house, he's got a real business. Check out his site and blog too - some good stuff there.

Good to see commentary like this though from a realtor. Unlike the mindless dribble and lies you see on realtytimes, realtor.org, bloodhoundblog and the thousands and thousands of waste-of-time realtor sites.

Message to the ramen-eaters: Tell the truth. There's a marketing strategy for you. Just tell the damn truth. Your credibility has been destroyed, likely beyond repair thanks to the monkeys at the NAR, but if you ever want to eat again, you're going to have to try something radical.

Oh, ditch the laughable 6% too. Seriously, you're gonna have to go with the hourly wage thing, with maybe a bonus for good performance. Just the way it's gonna be.

HousingPANIC Quote of the Day

This one's a beauty. Nice to see the REIC turn on each other. Finally.

(thanks a51 for the link)

"The one thing I can tell about you Realtors is that you're all liars"

-Joseph Anfuso, president of Florsheim Homes

Anfuso told agents during a Wednesday real estate conference at the University of San Diego that they need to stop inflating or hiding sales numbers and swallow a hard dose of reality on their cash flow if they expect to remain in business as sales continue to plummet.

Honorary HP'er Seth Jayson at Motley Fool absolutely destroys the liars at the NAR

Here's Seth. I'm not going to add anything. This is perfect. Well done. We need more MSM and columnists to go HousingPANIC.

Housing Worse, Despite Yelping NAR
By Seth Jayson

Sometimes you have to wonder what's coming out of the water cooler at National Association of Realtors (NAR) headquarters.

The past week has seen the trade group issue a slew of misleading press releases, all intended to jump-start a withering housing market and earn those Realtors a 6% commission. The latest is a prediction of a "modest recovery" for existing home sales in 2008. If you believe that, you need to review the NAR's hilarious history of ineptitude in predicting future home sales.

On the heels of the ridiculous kid-on-a-swing campaign, the Realtors, partying in Vegas, claimed that 2007 is a great year for housing, despite copious evidence that home prices are tanking at unprecedented and accelerating rates. The fire sales and lousy margins at homebuilders such as Hovnanian Enterprises (NYSE: HOV), Pulte Homes (NYSE: PHM), and D.R. Horton (NYSE: DHI) provide more proof that prices are crashing.

How can the NAR make such a bogus claim, then? Because by their (unsophisticated) measurements, home prices are still near record levels. That's like saying 2000 was a great year for JDS Uniphase.

Memo to the commission-addled non-thinkers at the NAR: We're on the back side of a bubble. It takes a while for home prices to drop, but they are dropping.

The folks who bought in at the top, based on the NAR's constant stream of "now is a great time to buy" propaganda are now looking at major, leveraged losses in equity. Many will lose everything in foreclosure and bankruptcy.

The monkeys at the NAR want you to believe it's a great time to be financially ruined (and take out a mortgage on a depreciating asset)

Monkeys I tell ya..

I especially liked these out-and-out lies and disinformation (with my comments of course)

* When you have a family it's always a good time to buy (why, is it a good idea to bankrupt your family? odd.)

* It didn't make sense for us spend the same amount of money renting something when we can own it (what, someone offer you an negative-am, no-down, teaser rate option-arm?)

* In this market there's a lot of options (well, that is true. 100,000 unwanted homes on the market in Phoenix alone. But why is that? Because they're WAY overpriced!)

* Prices are favorable (huh! prices are not even close to where they're going to be a year from now - much much much lower!)

FLASH: The NAR announces they're run by monkeys. In related news right on schedule they lower their home sales forecast for the EIGHTH STRAIGHT MONTH

A HousingPANIC message to the incompetent monkeys polluting the head office of the National Association of Realtors:

The nation is laughing at you. You've lost all credibility and respect. You are not only harming the homedebtors of America, you're also harming your 1.3 million suckers, err, I mean dues-payers.

Lower your damn forecast once and for all. "Drama-forecast". Lower 2007. Lower 2008. Lower 2009. You know the truth of what's happening, so say it. And believe it or not, the truth will actually HELP your suckers, err, I mean your dues-payers, start selling houses again.

Why? Because the truth will freak out the homedebtors who need to get the message that prices are going to fall dramatically, and they'll lower the damn prices.

Stop sending Yun out to lie to America. Stop with your lies and spin. And stop being the most evil and distrusted organization in America. You're not fooling anyone anymore.

Realtors Group Lowers Forecast for Existing Home Sales for Eighth-Straight Month

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The decline in sales of existing homes this year will be steeper than previously anticipated, a trade group for real estate agents said Wednesday.

The eighth straight downwardly revised forecast from the National Association of Realtors calls for U.S. existing home sales to be 10.8 percent lower than last year as housing market struggles persist.

In its October report, the association predicts 5.78 million existing homes will be sold in 2007, down from 6.48 million last year. Last month, the association predicted an 8.6 percent drop from a year ago.

Still, the group maintains an optimistic message. It's senior economist, Lawrence Yun, noted in a statement that markets including Austin, Texas, Salt Lake City and Raleigh N.C. are showing price growth and 2007's home sales will be the fifth-highest on record.

"The speculative excesses have been removed from the market and home sales are returning to fundamentally healthy levels, while prices remain near record highs, reflecting favorable mortgage rates and positive job gains," Yun said.

HP'er Seth Jayson at Motley Fool destroys the National Association of Realtors and their pathetic support for a government housing gambler bailout

Damn, reading Seth is like reading HP. Actually, reading Seth is reading HP, word for word in many cases. Come on Seth - if you're gonna lift 100% of our stuff, at least hat-tip us.

But hey, this HP-inspired rant kicks serious ass. realtor ass. And the NAR is the most disrespected and discredited professional organization in America today. Deservedly so.

Desperate Realtors Applaud Bailout

This didn't take long. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) -- you know, the trade group that spends millions lobbying our legislatures in order to ensure those fat, 6% cuts on residential housing sales -- is in favor of President Bush's proposed housing bailout

By bum-rushing buyers into bidding wars in hot markets (I saw one from the inside, once) and issuing positive spin to gullible mainstream media outlets, the Realtors could create a self-fulfilling prophecy, for a while.

But now the roof is on fire, as all of those exotic mortgages threaten to toast the NAR's crop of gullible buyers. Unfortunately for them, an inevitable result of the NAR's getting people to bid up houses and buy with zilch down payments is that far fewer homes and buyers qualify for FHA assistance.

Do these yahoos still not realize why housing is tanking? It's precisely because the loans that many Realtors jawboned people into taking were too big and had too little equity.

If the NAR gets its way, the people of the U.S. who didn't go out and spend irresponsibly during this housing bubble will be tasked with stepping in to guarantee the bad loans of those who did, spurred by the 6-percenters at the NAR

This kind of shameless, pecuniary self-interest should surprise no one. After all, it's tone-deaf real-estate agents who came up with the infamous "Suzanne" advertisement that now serves as the poster child for the triumph of greed, duplicity, and bullying over old-fashioned financial reason.

That the greedy and thoroughly discredited NAR supports these bailout measures ought to be the final proof that they are not in the public interest