Housing.com News, Analysis & Opinion: Buying and Selling: Housing Bubble Goes Mainstream

This isn't something I'm doing the dance of joy about, necessarily. As gleeful as I am to see all the "market never goes down" types get their just desserts (Would you like cherries with that, David Lereah?), we can't forget that these are real people, suffering real problems. The market may not completely tank, and bubbles may gently deflate, but people will still be losing homes.

So, what should we be doing? By now simply reporting on flattening condo markets, foreclosures, and unscrupulous realtor/broker/banker practices isn't enough. Bloggers were attached to the housing bubble long before anyone else was, so now we need to push the envelope and offer some solutions.

My best ideas include greater support for realtor transparency, first of all. Real estate brokers are one of the most under-regulated employment areas around. It never ceases to astonish me how people can take a few courses part-time, slap a shiny gold name tag on their lapel, and claim that they can predict the market WITH AUTHORITY. If everyday folks like me can discuss real estate just by watching the news and paying attention, why should we trust them? :)

We need stronger laws against predatory lending. If the Feddie Gov can't get its act together to prevent shady marketers from pushing no-doc loans to people with bad or no credit, the states and towns have to do it for them. That means more attention on local markets, contacts with major and minor media, and so on.

And we need to push the growth of Internet-based "alterna-brokerages." Sites like Google Base, Zillow, Craigslist, RealEstateABC, and so on...(Yes, including this site :) )...these are all tools that, if properly used, can give buyers serious information power on what their home is worth, what the broker's ultimate goal is, and where the markets are trending next.

We know what needs to be done to bring the housing market back to reality. Now it's just a matter of how to do it.

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://weblog.housing.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/146

When media sources ranging from the fast-food news of USA TODAY to the so-far-right-it-has-whiplash Weekly Standard are discussing the housing bubble in real, honest terms, you know for certain that it's arrived. This isn't something I'm doing the dance of joy about, necessarily. As gleeful as I am to see all the "market never goes down" types get their just desserts (Would you like cherries with that, David Lereah?), we can't forget that these are real people, suffering real problems. The market may not completely tank, and bubbles may gently deflate, but people will still be losing homes. So, what should we be doing? By now simply reporting on flattening condo markets, foreclosures, and unscrupulous realtor/broker/banker practices isn't enough. Bloggers were attached to the housing bubble long before anyone else was, so now we need to push the envelope and offer some solutions. My best ideas include greater support for realtor transparency, first of all. Real estate brokers are one of the most under-regulated employment areas around. It never ceases to astonish me how people can take a few courses part-time, slap a shiny gold name tag on their lapel, and claim that they can predict the market WITH AUTHORITY. If everyday folks like me can discuss real estate just by watching the news and paying attention, why should we trust them? :) We need stronger laws against predatory lending. If the Feddie Gov can't get its act together to prevent shady marketers from pushing no-doc loans to people with bad or no credit, the states and towns have to do it for them. That means more attention on local markets, contacts with major and minor media, and so on. And we need to push the growth of Internet-based "alterna-brokerages." Sites like Google Base, Zillow, Craigslist, RealEstateABC, and so on...(Yes, including this site :) )...these are all tools that, if properly used, can give buyers serious information power on what their home is worth, what the broker's ultimate goal is, and where the markets are trending next. We know what needs to be done to bring the housing market back to reality. Now it's just a matter of how to do it.