Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Daniel Gross Rips Lereah To Pieces

In a scathing piece Slate columnist Daniel Gross rips Lereah and his successor Lawrence Yun to pieces. Mr.Gross would be welcomed as a guest columnist for this blog or the Lawrence Yun Watch blog.

But within the fraternity of financial and fiscal forecasters, the seers at the National Association of Realtors—longtime chief economist David Lereah and his successor Lawrence Yun—may be uniquely ill-equipped to deliver sobering forecasts. They work for a trade group whose mission is to buck up the spirits of real-estate brokers. And real-estate brokers—who live to sell, promote, and market—are constitutionally disinclined to hear anything but good news. Indeed, as I noted last summer, Lereah's penchant for putting out positive spin on dismal housing numbers inspired a blog and led critics to dub him the Baghdad Bob of real estate. Lereah has moved on. But Yun has picked up where he left off.

In addition to claiming that the sun is shining brilliantly even as rain pours down from the heavens in a mighty stream, Lereah and Yun have also hazarded optimistic, educated guesses about the future. In February 2005, Lereah published a book that is my candidate for Longest Title Ever: Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom?: The Boom Will Not Bust and Why Property Values Will Continue To Climb Through the End of the Decade—And How To Profit From Them. Naturally, the boom busted soon after publication, and property values began to descend.


Thanks for the mention of this blog. Daniel Gross is right on the money when he writes "David Lereah and his successor Lawrence Yun—may be uniquely ill-equipped to deliver sobering forecasts." It is refreshing to read people in the press call out these paid shills from the NAR.

6 Comments:

At 12:24 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm not sure that I give the author that much credit (although I would have to look into his past articles before passing judgment). It's easy to report on things AFTER THE FACT. Where were all the honest reporters when we needed them? Again, if this guy was a good reporter then... he is exempt.

 
At 9:35 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

One of David Lereah's books is "All Real Estate Is Local" Just like his other book "Are You Missing The Real Estate Boom", he is right on the money. Even with all this doom and gloom talk about the crasing real estate market, you will find a lot of data that proves Mr. Lereah right. Case in point, NOVEMBER HEAD LINE NEWS "CALIFORNIA HOME SALES DECREASE BY 36.2 percent, MEDIAN HOME PRICE FALLS 11.9 percent". Yet no one points out the fact that there were also areas where the price of real estate continues to climb.
Statewide,13 cities and communities with the greatest median home price increases in November 2007 compared with the same period a year ago were: San Juan Capistrano, 42.3 percent; Newport Beach, 31.5 percent; Santa Monica, 29.4 percent; Mountain View, 18 percent; Cupertino, 18 percent; Truckee, 10.2 percent; Redwood City, 9.7 percent; Yorba Linda, 9.6 percent; Santa Barbara, 7.5 percent; Moorpark, 7.2 percent; San Francisco, 7.2 percent; Pasadena, 7.2 percent; and Los Angeles, 5.8 percent. Of course, like most liberal hacks, Mr Gross will pick and choose his news of doom and gloom.

 
At 3:59 PM, Blogger Elmo said...

Great article on the real estate happenings, I really enjoy reading your posts. Just for your information, Donald Trump is in big trouble right now with his real estate empire. I hope everyone can pull through this slump!!

Elmo

Real Estate Professional

 
At 11:14 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

So, where does that leave the US housing market? Inflated prices, record foreclosures... Who is buying now? When things bottom out, I want to be where the smart money will be!

 
At 9:44 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

 
At 3:11 PM, Blogger das said...

3M, Cisco and GE tumbled more than the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index this year, sending Morgan Stanley’s “New Nifty Fifty” index of companies, that depend on overseas sales down 18%, the worst start in six years. The money-losing advice is the latest misstep by Wall Street, which overestimated fourth-quarter profits by the largest margin ever and failed to anticipate that rising inflation and more than $400 billion of bank losses would spur the biggest sell-off in global equities since 1970, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

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