In the real estate transactions world, we are operating in new territory. Buyers are nervous ("are we overpaying?"). Lenders are skittish ("are we overfinancing?"). Appraisers are ultra-conservative. And so on. It is for this reason that I have been suggesting to my clients for more than a year that the period between contract and closing --
Notwithstanding a lot of negative information about housing prices, I believe we will see stabilization in the markets by mid-year. Here is my thinking: The speed in which our economy crashed (housing and stock prices) is unprecedented. There were no economic models to predict what happened. Once the decline started, the fuel
For many of us, the financial meltdown has been a wake-up call. A reminder that oftentimes the assumptions we make when times are good do not hold up when the economy falters. The meltdown has reminded me that just because methodologies and technologies may advance, human nature does not. As a result there is a lot to be learned from
[caption id="attachment_158" align="alignleft" width="265" caption="null"][/caption] From The Skinny on the Housing Crisis (Clover Leaf, 2008) Yesterday Alan Greenspan, Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, testified before Congress. To his credit, he was somewhat forthcoming in acknowledging that
In my last post, I whined that no one in government was doing an adequate job of educating the public about the arguments for and against the bailout bill. My belief is that there is just too much information out there being thrown at us too quickly and no one is stopping to explain the fundamentals. I suggested we find Ron Popeil (of
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