Inman Blog

Where's the beef in Case-Shiller attacks?

matt_carter — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:02:33 -0700

In back-to-back Inman News columns, Bernice Ross wades into the controversy over the reporting of home price statistics. In Part 1, "Put a gag on Chicken Little," Ross argues that home prices are stabilizing, but that the media's emphasis on home price indexes published by Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller has created "a crisis in consumer confidence." In Part 2, "Where's the beef in home-price reports? "she details the bones she has to pick with the Case-Shiller index.

Ross raises some legitimate points -- there is no doubt that some consumers don't understand that those headlines screaming about national home price declines don't necessarily reflect what's happening in their market. But in placing the blame at the feet of Case-Shiller and the media, Ross fails to get to the bottom of the question she claims to address: why do Case-Shiller's numbers differ from those produced by NAR and the regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, OFHEO?

Before your eyes glaze over, the numbers all have their uses, their differences are easily explained, and they boil down to this:

1) Case-Shiller and OFHEO look at repeat purchases and exclude new home purchases, but OFHEO also throws in appraisals that are generated when people refinance their homes. As we have all become very cognizant of lately, what a house will appraise for and what a house will actually sell for on the market can be very different things.

2) OFHEO doesn't consider transactions involving loans that are too big or too risky to be guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie, and acknowledges that homes with these mortgages on the upper and lower price ranges are seeing bigger price declines than the homes it tracks.

3) NAR looks sales of existing homes listed by MLSs, and reports median home prices, which reduces the impact of price volatility in upper price ranges.

The result is that the Case-Shiller index can show more extreme swings in price -- both up and down -- than NAR or OFHEO's numbers.

There are actually three Case-Shiller indexes -- monthly 10- and 20-city surveys, and a quarterly report that looks at all nine U.S. Census regions. The monthly survey is the one people tend to get the most worked up about, because it looks at 20 metropolitan statistical areas that include hard-hit areas like Detroit, Las Vegas, L.A., Miami, Phoenix, San Diego and Washintgton D.C. -- all of which have experienced double-digit price declines in the last year.

To the extent that the monthly Case-Shiller index can mistakenly be interpreted -- by a cursory reading of a headline, perhaps -- as representing the state of the nation's housing markets, that's a problem. And Ross is not alone in pointing out that Case-Shiller can also miss trends in micro-markets, like Manhattan, because it doesn't track sales of condos and co-ops.

But Ross, echoing an opinon piece written by NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun in February, also wants to make the case that the media and Case-Shiller are purposely misleading us.

"The S&P/Case-Shiller Index is the gold (scare) standard these days for those who report on the housing market," Ross complains in her first column. "News agencies began using this index about two years ago rather than the indices provided by OFHEO (the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight) and NAR."

In his opinion piece, which was also published in the Wall Street Journal, Yun said he sees the media as being "in the business of selling news, and more sales can be made with sensationalism." Yun confided that he personally has been told "by (a) few reporters off-the-record that they are interested in increasing their viewership even if it means putting things out of context."

I'm not aware of any serious news organization that has stopped reporting numbers from NAR or OFHEO. And while some newspapers and Web sites may get a short term boost in readership by sensationalizing a story, in the long run, becoming a trusted source of information is the key to success in the news-gathering biz (television and tabloid news excepted).

Yun also goes after Robert Shiller, the Yale economist who helped develop the Case-Shiller index, claiming that as a co-founder of MacroMarkets LLC, he profits from the trade of housing and futures options on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and has a financial incentive to "scare" the market.

"The more hedging of bets that occur, the more profits go into Dr. Shiller’s bank account," Yun claims. "And more hedging of the bets will take place if people believe there will be a crash in housing values."

What Yun neglects to mention is that price increases also spark trades, and that a reliable benchmark of housing prices is an absolute neccessity for such trading to occur. The Case-Shiller indexes are calculated by Fiserv Inc., and maintained by a committee of industry experts who follow a set of published guidelines.

Like reputable journalists, the people who publish the Case-Shiller indexes know that their product is worthless if it's perceived as biased or concocted to serve a purpose other than providing the customer with the most current, most objective information.

Ross, the author of "Waging War on Real Estate's Discounters," takes a similar poke at the credibility of the motives of those who produce the Case-Shiller indexes, claiming, NAR, OFHEO and Realogy are more trustworthy:

"Ultimately, the question is whom should you believe -- the academicians and Wall Street with their complex derivatives that gave us the subprime mess, or NAR, the federal government and the real-world numbers from publicly traded real estate companies?"

Never mind that Shiller had nothing to do with the excesses in lending during the housing boom, or that his warnings of the inevitable consequences were dismissed by the industry. Here's an excerpt from NAR's Dec. 1, 2006 Realtor Magazine:

"Robert Shiller scored instant media celebrity when his 2000 book, Irrational Exuberance, predicted the tech bubble’s explosion just weeks before the fact. Four years later, when he tried to apply the same principles to the real estate boom, he found out that all investments don’t behave alike. Shiller contended that rising home prices weren’t based in the fundamentals of population growth and supply and demand; they were bubbles, destined to pop. To the contrary, NAR economists predicted that market slowdowns would largely be gradual—a trend that’s playing out today. Shiller’s failed bubble scenario demonstrates that sometimes even smart guys get it wrong."

Yun and Ross are mostly too busy shooting the messenger to take a serious look at why the Case-Shiller numbers tend to show bigger price swings than those produced by NAR and OFHEO. Both make a big deal of the weighting formula used to draw up the Case-Shiller indexes.

Yun says the weighting "places a vastly higher weight on multimillion dollar homes" -- an approach, he claimed, that "flies directly in the face of the American sense of democratic values." That might get your blood boiling -- especially if you don't live in a multimillion dollar house -- but what does it have to do with mathematical and statistical principles that may or may not justify weighting?

According to Standard & Poor's, weighting is designed to make sure that the indexes aren't unduly influenced by "atypical" sales. A home that sells more than once in a six month period is not included in the index because it may be a fraudulent transaction, is not an arms-length deal, or follows the redevelopment of a property. Less weight is given to homes that have large changes in price relative to others in their area because the home may have been "remodeled, rebuilt or neglected."

Ross calls the system "absurd," because "Lenders don't look to computer-generated models to make lending decisions; instead they rely on those buyer and seller 'mispricing decisions' (i.e. comparable sales) to determine how much they will loan on a given property."

Hmmm... or maybe lenders should have been more careful about those buyer and seller "mispricing decisions?" Whether or not you believe it makes sense to exclude sales that might be distorting home prices because they stand out like a sore thumb from other comps, Standard & Poor's says 85 to 90 percent of sales aren't weighted at all.

OFHEO's most recent study of the differences between its home price index and the Case-Shiller indexes suggest that the effect of value-weighting high price homes is relatively small, and that the gap between the indexes is not explained by different price trends among the most expensive homes (Ross, in arguing that weighting is a problem, sights an older OFHEO study in which the authors admit that OFHEO's attempts to recreate the Case-Shiller weighting formula were "imperfect").

According to OFHEO, what seems to be propping up prices in its own index is the use of appraisal data (when borrowers refinance their homes), and also what's happening to the price of homes that are purchased with mortgages that are NOT guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie (i.e., subprime and jumbo loans). Until April, Fannie and Freddie were not buying or guaranteeing mortgages larger than $417,000. Now the government-sponsored enterprises are allowed to go up to $729,750 in high cost areas.

"Price declines seem to be particularly large for low and moderately priced homes without Enterprise-purchased mortgages," OFHEO said in its January report, "Revisiting the Differences between the OFHEO and S&P/Case-Shiller House Price Indexes: New Explanations."

Removing appraisal valuations reduced the gap between the OFHEO and Case-Shiller indexes from 4.3 to 2.7 percent. When OFHEO plugged in price data from DataQuick on sales of lower-priced homes with mortgages not backed by Fannie and Freddie, it found that the gap was closed by another 1 percent, to 1.7 percent.

So, if you are looking at purchasing a really cheap or a really expensive home in a market that saw a lot of subprime lending that's covered by the Case-Shiller index, perhaps it's not "the leader in innacuracy," as Ross claims. On the other hand, if you're looking at a home that's in the median price range, NAR's numbers might be a good bet. And if you're looking to buy an existing home in the one of the hundreds of markets covered by OFHEO that didn't see lots of crazy lending practices during the boom, that index might be a pretty good indicator of what's happening with prices.

Whichever index you choose, none paints a rosy big picture, although that doesn't stop Ross from trying.

Ross gets off on the wrong foot in her first column, beginning the discussion with an apples-to-oranges comparison between an April 29 Case-Shiller report and an April 22 OFHEO release.

The Case-Shiller price declines Ross cites (12.7 percent in the 20-city composite) are for a limited number of MSAs over a one-year period. Ross compares the Case-Shiller numbers to a slight month-to-month increase in prices (0.6 percent) for the entire country from OFHEO. Annual versus monthly. MSAs versus national. And the point is?

Ross doesn't tell us what time frame she's referring to when she states "NAR, OFHEO and Realogy all reach the same conclusion: Prices are down nationally less than 1 percent and, in many areas, prices are actually increasing."

In fact, the latest numbers from NAR show that in the last year, median home prices have fallen 8 percent (NAR doesn't report seasonally-adjusted month-to-month changes). Realogy, in its latest report to investors, says average home prices in transactions handled by Realogy Franchise Group were down 7 percent during the first quarter compared to a year ago. OFHEO puts the year-over-year average price decline at 3.1 percent, and says peak-to-trough, prices are down 3.7 percent since April, 2007.

Because OFHEO slices its monthly numbers up into nine Census divisions (rather than MSAs) and prices were up in seven of those divisions in its April 22 report, Ross claims "a whopping 77 percent of the areas in the U.S. reported a price increase between January 2008 and February 2008!"

But the same report showed year-over-year price declines in six of nine Census divisions. The latest, most detailed numbers from OFHEO (which came out after Ross wrote her columns) show first quarter price declines 43 states in the "purchase only" index (which excludes refis), and quarterly price declines in all nine Census divisions. In the "all transactions" index, which includes refis, 128 of the 292 ranked MSAs saw quarterly price declines.

Real estate technologists don't die ...

Glenn_Roberts — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:08:40 -0700

Life after eNeighborhoods for two former managers: WoolleyRobertson.com.

Finding Your Religion with Real Estate Searches

Glenn_Roberts — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:18:11 -0700

StopWandering.com, a Web site now in beta, displays real estate listings in proximity to synagogues in the United States. Another site, ShalomHome.com, offers referrals to real estate professionals who offer to guide clients to synagogues and other resources in a community.

There are a range of faith-focused real estate sites on the Internet: MuslimRealEstate.com offers a "One Stop Shop" for Muslim real estate services, according to a Web site description, "From apartments to mansions to masjids (mosques)."

Other faith-based real estate sites include LDSRealtorOC.com, LDSAgents.com; the Christian Real Estate Network at HisMove.com; and Christian Real Estate Brokers Association at http://www.americanchristians.org/ChristianRealEstateBrokers.htm.

Meanwhile, religious preference was a topic in a legal case filed by a Chicago lawyers' group against online classifieds and community site craigslist.org. The lawyers' group, which alleged craigslist violated the federal Fair Housing Act, objected to the phrase "Catholic Church and beautiful Buddhist Temple within one block" in a post at the site as a sign of religious preference, for example, while craigslist viewed the example as "helping people zero in on properties most attractive to their preferences and no more implying exclusion than 'elementary school within five minutes' walk,'" according to an opinion issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals in that case. Craigslist ultimately prevailed in the case, as the court found craiglist was just a messenger and not liable for discriminatory posts by site users (see Inman News report).

Big houses and the billionaires who love them

Glenn_Roberts — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:05:29 -0700

A billionaire's planned construction of "the world's most expensive home" has soured, Forbes.com reports. Tim Blixseth, owner of The Yellowstone Club near Big Sky, Mont., had plans to build a home valued at $155 million on a 160-acre lot. That undeveloped lot -- the "superhouse" was never built -- has sold for $10 million, Forbes reports.

Another super-rich guy, Donald Trump, has sold a home for $100 million in Palm Beach, Fla., after dropping the price down from $125 million, the Palm Beach Post reports. Trump reportedly paid $41.35 million for the six-acre oceanfront property in 2004.

The Texas Ratio

matt_carter — Thu, 29 May 2008 03:57:14 -0700

There's been a lot of speculation about how many banks will go under as the mortgage loans they made during the housing boom go bad -- speculation that's been spurred in part by news that the FDIC is adding staff to deal with expected bank failures.

RBC Capital Markets predicts at least 150 banks will go under in the next two to three years, Marketwatch reports in a story exploring "Texas Ratios," an "early-warning" system developed by RBC analysts including Gerard Cassidy.

If you take a bank's non-performing loans, divide them by tangible equity capital and money set aside for loan losses, banks with a ratio above 100 percent are likely to fail -- at least that's the way it played out in Texas in the 1980s and New England in the early '90s, Cassidy says.

RBC identifies a bunch of banks with climbing Texas Ratios, including IndyMac Bancorp, which Cassidy claims has a 140 percent ratio of non-performing loans to capital.

Indymac fired back on the official company blog Wednesday, saying the May 21 RBC Capital Markets report the Marketwatch article relied on significantly understated the company's capital. Indymac -- which posted $609 million in losses in 2007 and $184 million in the first qarter of 2008 -- dismissed RBC's claim that the company has a 140 percent Texas Ratio as "materially inaccurate." It's more like 75 percent, or 68 percent, depending on what reserves you want to include, Indymac claims.

Marketwatch notes that the FDIC flagged 76 banks as potentially troubled at the end of 2007, and while that's up 50 percent from 2006, the 50 banks on the list at the time represented a low not seen in at least 25 years.

Meanwhile, Punk Ziegel analyst Richard Bove -- who famously called an end to the credit crunch back in March, and was recently rated by Zacks Investment Research as the one of the top 12 investment analysts in the country -- likes large-cap bank stocks like Bank of America and Wells Fargo. While lenders like Wachovia and Washington Mutual were too heavily dependent on mortgages, Bove tells Forbes, other big lenders count on deposits for their core earnings, and those deposits are growing. Being a contrarian means being wrong sometimes, and following Bove's advice in September -- when he upped his rating on Bear Stearns -- would have cost you a good chunk of change.

Why do we care about Indymac's Texas Ratio and some stock picker's views of Bank of America and Wells Fargo? Dozens of subprime lenders went belly up in 2007, and if banks and savings and loans start disappearing or are forced to make (bigger) cutbacks in mortgage lending, the resulting industry consolidation could reduce competition and raise the cost of borrowing -- something regulators looking at Bank of America's plan to acquire Countrywide Financial Corp. are no doubt mindful of.

Change of plans

matt_carter — Thu, 29 May 2008 03:01:53 -0700

Some Hollywood moguls who were ready to build a $282 million movie production studio they claimed would bring 2,000 high paying jobs and "a river-like flow" of movie and television shoots to the tiny community of Plymouth, Mass. are getting an education in clearing title.

After winning approval from local residents, securing a promise of $55 million in highway and other infrastructure improvements from state officials, and spending $4.5 million of their own money on preliminary site work and design (see Patriot Ledger story), Plymouth Rock Studios "dropped a bomb" on the town's selectmen this week by announcing that the 1,000-acre site they'd picked has a little problem associated with it: clearing title on 7,058 individual campsites dating back to the early 1900s.

"Tracing the chain of title on each of them is necessary and half of them have serious problems that will take extensive time to rectify," Emily Wilcox of WickedLocal.com reports. The job would take about two years, even if the city tried to take the land through eminent domain, the story said. Two weeks after voters gave the project the go-ahead in a 8,530 to 1,118 vote, Plymouth Rock Studios officials say they're looking at nine other sites, two of which are outside the town.

Makes you wonder what kind of mess rustbelt cities are going to have redeveloping neighborhoods hard hit by foreclosures. Reporting on the city of Cleveland's lawsuit against 21 investment banks and mortgage lenders, Newsweek says the city and surrounding Cuyahoga County have 22,000 vacant foreclosed properties.

"More people have left Cuyahoga than any other county in the U.S. with the exception of New Orleans," County Treasurer Jim Rokakis tells the weekly magazine. "They had a hurricane; we had lenders."

Many of those properties are undoubtedly scattered throughout some neighborhoods that are still viable, but there are probably opportunities to bulldoze others, combine lots, and create public spaces or build larger residential or commercial projects. The National Vacant Properties Campaign provides information and tools for cities tackling such challenges.

The picture above, by the way, is from a set of 32 depicting abandoned homes in and around Missouri taken in last two years and posted to Flickr by Serrator3. Watch the slide show for the full effect. Most or all of these homes appear to have met their fates long before the housing downturn came along (they've also been tagged for inclusion in the "Rural Decay" pool, which has 13,000+ members). More pictures of abandoned homes from other Flickr members.

NOW or THEN for VOWs

Glenn_Roberts — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:23:46 -0700

Geoff Lewis, a lawyer for RE/MAX International, tells Inman News that he believes the proposed agreement to settle the DOJ vs. NAR antitrust lawsuit won't mean much for the industry or consumers, as Internet Data Exchange (IDX) sites already enjoy widespread use by industry participants and don't require registration to access data as Virtual Office Web sites would under the terms of the proposed settlement (see Inman News article today).

Is it too late for VOWs? "The response to VOWs hasn't been great because consumers can find sites throughout the Internet on which to gather information without having to register their name and contact information," Mark Lesswing, NAR chief technology officer, stated in a NAR announcement about the proposed settlement. But some say they expect the settlement will encourage VOW innovations.

There's disagreement on whether the settlement agreement could potentially lead to lower costs for consumers, and on a number of other issues addressed in the settlement.

Some interesting points in the proposed new VOW policy that will result from this settlement: "An agreement entered into at any time between the (MLS) participant and registrant (at a VOW site) imposing a financial obligation on the registrant or creating representation of the registrant by the participant must be established separately from the terms of use, must be prominently labeled as such, and may not be accepted solely by a mouse click."

Does this language prevent a company from offering exclusively Internet-based real estate brokerage services to consumers? What if the consumer presses the "enter" key on the computer instead of the mouse? Or uses a trackball?

And there's this: "the registrant (at a VOW site) acknowledges entering into a lawful consumer-broker relationship with the participant." But what is "a lawful consumer-broker relationship," and could registration at a VOW site potentially be a trigger for procuring cause claims?

There is a lot of other language in the proposed settlement that industry professionals will be pouring over in the weeks ahead. We've created a discussion group at the "Community" section of the Inman News site.

Please visit the group site to share your thoughts about what this settlement might mean for the industry and for consumers.

Also, check out an Inman poll on the topic here.

DOJ vs. NAR settles ...

Glenn_Roberts — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:54:33 -0700

From U.S. Justice Department announcement today: "The Department of Justice announced today that it has reached a proposed settlement with the National Association of Realtors (NAR) that requires NAR to allow Internet-based residential real estate brokers to compete with traditional brokers. The Department said the settlement will enhance competition in the real estate brokerage industry, resulting in more choice, better service, and lower commission rates for consumers. NAR has agreed to be bound by a 10-year settlement to ensure that it continues to abide by the requirements of the agreement."

From National Association of Realtors announcement today: "The National Association of Realtors has reached a favorable settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, resolving litigation between them regarding how listings from multiple listing services are displayed on brokers' virtual office Web sites. The proposed final order, to be filed with the federal district court in Chicago today, validates NAR's longstanding Internet Data Exchange (IDX) policy and strengthens the rule governing participation in multiple listing services."

See Inman News article.

Foreclosures: Vultures, Voyeurs and Lawyers

Glenn_Roberts — Fri, 23 May 2008 10:09:06 -0700

The swath of blight and financial troubles carved out by a rise in foreclosures has also cleared the path for a growing cottage industry.

A production company in Florida is seeking to syndicate a reality television show starring Tom Bruzzesi, a Realtor and foreclosure investor who has bought and sold over 250 foreclosure properties in the past five years.

"In each episode of 'The Foreclosure Shoppe,' camera crews follow Tom on a typical wild and crazy day at the office," according to an announcement this week that promotes the series.

"Tom (affectionately nicknamed 'The Maniac' by his peers) confesses that he is a master at frustrating people. 'I know how to get underneath their skin and throw off their bidding strategies,' Tom admits. From irritating bidders at the courthouse, to walking through his purchased properties for the first time, to evicting tenants that won't leave, to picking up his large paychecks, viewers get an inside pass to witness Tom navigating through the messy foreclosure process."

Bus tours of foreclosure properties are also springing up in hard-hit markets across the country (see Inman News article).

CondoVultures.com offers market intelligence to investors about the condo market in South Florida, including court foreclosure listings for several counties.

Foreclosure-related real estate sales represent a substantial share of sold and for-sale properties in some market areas, and many agents have sought training and specialized in this growing niche (there are several membership organizations for agents who work with foreclosure properties). Lawyers, too, seek to cash in on the growth and growing interest in foreclosures.

Christian N. Folland, a real estate lawyer and Realtor in South Florida, for example, promotes his combined experience in working with buyers to "find and buy pre- and post-foreclosed or otherwise discounted properties while avoiding the legal pitfalls of problem or 'red-flagged' properties."

He lists possible complications with foreclosure properties: title issues, fraudulent developer contracts, lawsuits over construction defects, high numbers of renters vs. owners, pending special assessments, large numbers of pre-construction buyers who fail to close, downgrades in unit finishes due to the high cost of materials, and lender blacklisting due to fraudulent sales and appraisals.

Guess Who's Coming To Connect?

jburslem — Fri, 23 May 2008 09:53:55 -0700

Have you seen who's coming to Connect this year?

I just took a look at the list of speakers and it made my head spin a bit. I think it's going to be a fantastic event.

Check out who's going to be there:

Alex Chang, CEO, Roost
Alex Perriello, CEO, Realogy
Alexis McGee, President, ForeclosureS.com
Andy Kaufman, Social Media & Community Specialist, MyEastBayAgent
Ardell Della Loggia, Author, RainCityGuide.com
Ashfaq Munshi, Founder & CEO, Terabitz
Avram Goldman, President & CEO, Pacific Union GMAC Real Estate
Ben Martin, Director of Communications & New Media, VARblog
Benn Rosales, Founder, Agent Genius
Beth Butler, COO, EWM Realtors
Beverly Faull, GM & SVP, Fidelity National Information Services
Bill Staniford, CEO,PropertyShark
Bill Wendel, Owner, Real Estate Café
Bob Hale, President & CEO, HAR
Bradford Geisen, Founder, President & CEO, Foreclosure.com
Brendan Walsh, Advertising Director, The NY Times
Brian Balduf, President & CEO, VHT
Cameron Paine, CEO, Connecticut MLS, Inc.
Celeste Starchild, Vice President Broker Sales, ListHub: Broker Division of Threewide
Chris Crocker, Vice President, South West Region, NRT Inc
Chris Matty, CMO, ForeclosurePoint.com
CR, Writer, Calculated Risk
Craig Donato, Co-Founder & CEO, Oodle
Craig King, COO, Chase International
Craig Newmark, customer service rep & founder, craigslist.org
Daniel Rothamel, Realtor, Strong Team REALTORS; Blogger, Real Estate Zebra
David Charron, President & CEO, MRIS
David Faudman, CEO, CleanOffer, Inc.
David Gibbons, Community Relations, Zillow
David Therrien, CTO, Keller Williams Realty International
Deanna Brown, President, Scripps Networks Interactive
Derrick Overbey, VP, Marketing, Intero
Don Lawby, President, Century 21 Canada Limited Partnership LLC
Douglas Pope, Co-Founder, HoptPads.com
Douglas De Jager, Founder, DotHomes.com
Dustin Luther, Founder, 4Realz.net Consulting
Errol Samuelson, President, Realtor.com
Frances Flynn Thorsen, Managing Editor, RealTown.com
Frank Borges Llosa, FranklyRealty.com & FranklyMLS.com
Fred Light, Video Producer, Nashua Video Tours
Gahlord Dewald, Director of Web Strategy, Union Street Media
Galen Ward, Co-Founder, Estately.com
Greg Tracy, President, BlueRoof360
Guy Wolcott, Co-Founder, Sawbuck Realty
Harold Justman, Attorney at Law, Fimmel, Justman & Rible
Henry Shao, CEO, Movoto
Heidi Mueller, Broker Associate, Prudential California Realty
Jamie Clymer, President, Rentals.com & RentalHouses.com
Janet Choynowski, Founder & CEO, Immobel.com
Jason Benesch, IT, Real Estate Tomato
Jay Thompson, Designated Broker, Thompson's Realty
Jeff Corbett, Author, The XBroker Blog
Jeff Turner, President, Realestateshows.com
Jim Cronin, Owner/Author, Real Estate Tomato
Jim Duncan, Realtor/Blogger, RealCentralVa.com
Jim Harrison, President & CEO, MLSListings
Jim Marks, President, Virtual Results
Joel Singer, EVP, CAR
John Beldock, CEO, Ecobroker.com
John Helm, CEO, MyNewPlace
John Pollard, Founder, Jott Networks
Jonathan Dalton, Realtor, e-Pro RE/MAX Desert Showcase
Jonathan Miller, Co-Founder, Miller Samuel
Jorrit Van der Meulen, VP Partner Relations, Zillow
Joseph Ferrara, Publisher, Sellsius Blog
Justin McCarthy, Strategic Partner Development Manager, Google
Kerry Donovan, Realtor, Chase International
Kevin Boer, Managing Principal, Domus Consulting Group
Kevin Seney, Founder, Bug Realty USA
Kevin Tomlinson, Realtor, EWM Realtors
Konstantin Guericke, CEO, jaxtr, Inc.
Kris Berg, Broker Associate, Prudential California Realty
Lauren Guzak, Director of Strategic Relations, DataQuick
Laurie Manny, Realtor, Long Beach Real Estate Home
Lennox Scott, CEO, John L. Scott Real Estate
Linda Davis, Broker/Owner, East Connecticut Real Estate
Lloyd Frink, President & Co-Founder, Zillow
Lorna Borenstein, President, Move, Inc.
Louis Cammarosano, General Manager, HomeGain
Marc Canter, Broadband Mechanics
Marc Davison, Partner, 1000Watt Consulting
Mark Lesswing, Sr. Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, NAR
Mark Tepper, VP, Business Development & Sales, Homescape
Mary Pope-Handy, Realtor, Co-Author, "Get The Best Deal When Selling Your Home In Silicon Valley"
Marilyn Wilson, Founding Partner, Wavgroup
Matt Fagioli, Chief Evangelists & Operating Broker, Diamond Dwelling Realty
Matt Goyer, Lead Product Manager, Redfin
Melanie Wyne, Senior Technology Policy Representative, NAR
Michael Davin, President, CataList Homes
Michael Rogers, Next Generation's Consuming Media, NY Times
Mike Malkasian, President, FSBO.com
Mike Simonsen, Co Founder & CEO, Altos Research
Nicole Nicolay, Co-Founder, Effektive Solutions, MyTechOpinion
Noah Rosenblatt, Founder, UrbanDigs.com
Oliver Muoto, Co-Founder & VP of Business Development, vFlyer
Oren Michels, CEO, Mashery
Patrick F. Stone, Chairman, The Stone Group
Patrick Kitano, Managing Principal, Domus Consulting Group
Peter Flint, CEO, Trulia
Phil Thomas Di Giulio, Co-Founder, WellcomeMat.com
Richard Fisher, Broker, Morro Bay Realty
Rick Sharga, VP of Marketing, RealtyTrac
Rob Massey Jr., Founder, RentalHouses.com
Rudolph Bachraty III, Social Media Guru, Trulia
Ryan Slack, CEO, MyDealBook.com
Rick Spencer, Director, Product Management, Windermere
Sami Inkinen, Co-Founder & COO, Trulia
Sean Black, VP of Sales, Trulia
Sean O'Toole, Founder & CEO, ForeclosureRadar.com
Shari Chase, CEO, President & Founder, Chase International
Simon Baker, CEO & Managing Director, REA Group\
Teresa Boardman, Realtor/Broker, Keller Williams Integrity Realty
Todd Carpenter, Founder, Bizomi Consulting
Tom Geller, Author, Save My Home: 10 Steps to Avoiding Foreclosure
Vikki Neal, VP Online Classifieds, FrontDoor.com
Yannick Laclau, CEO, Properazzi
Yves Smith, Author, NakedCapitalism.com

So, are you coming to Connect?

Registration rates go up June 6th so I wouldn't sit on the decision too much longer. Register today and you'll save $130.

And if you're coming to Connect already - make sure you join the Connect SF 2008 Group.

You can also find us on LinkedIn and Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

See you in San Francisco!