There is still uncertainty in some markets on whether or not it's OK for Realtors to use the term "MLS" or "multiple listing service" in their Web site addresses. Some MLSs have passed policies banning participants from using these terms in Web addresses, company names, etc., and the National Association of Realtors board of directors has approved language for an optional policy that MLSs can adopt in restricting the use of MLS-related terms.

There is some debate (even a legal battle) on the issue, as Realtors who use or seek to use MLS in their marketing argue that non-Realtors and non-MLS members are free to use the term because it is not legally protected by NAR. Meanwhile, some Realtors and MLS officials say that improper use of the term "MLS" can serve to confuse and mislead consumers about the definition and function of MLSs.

Last week, members of a National Association of Realtors' committee made some minor changes to language in a case example that supports a provision in the code of ethics relating to Realtor's presentation of a true picture in their advertising and other representations to the public. The case example relates to a situation in which a Realtor used "MLS" in a Web site address. The original language in the case example "might be overbroad, and there could be circumstances where the letters MLS in a Realtor's URL might not be misleading," according to information considered by the committee.

When the case example was approved last year, it read: "While Realtor Z's Web site included information about other participants' listings that the MLS had provided -- and that Realtor Z was authorized to display -- the fact remained that a real estate-related URL that included the letters MLS would lead reasonable consumers to conclude that the Web site would be an MLS's, and not a broker's Web site. Realtor Z was found in violation of Article 12 as interpreted by Standard of Practice 12-10."

And after the committee's change: "While Realtor Z's Web site included information about other participants' listings that the MLS had provided -- and that Realtor Z was authorized to display -- the fact remained that a real estate-related URL that includes the letters MLS will, in many cases lead reasonable consumers to conclude that the Web site is an MLS's, and not a broker's Web site. That was the case with Realtor Z's URL and Realtor Z was found in violation of Article 12 as interpreted by Standard of Practice 12-10."

Is it deceptive for a Realtor who is an MLS participant to own and use a Web site address that includes the term 'MLS?' What if the Realtor is a member of the MLS? Displays listings data from the MLS? Includes disclaimers stating that the Realtor does not own or operate an MLS?

It's a local matter for local MLSs to handle through specialized policies or through secretive arbitration processes if there are complaints. Because the results of these case-by-case arbitration proceedings are confidential, it's difficult to know how this issue is being dealt with at the local level.

Do you think of Yelp.com as the place to go to find out what people are saying about that new restaurant down the street? Yelp also wants to be thought of as a tool for finding real estate professionals..

In Silicon Valley -- which, you would think would be Yelp's dream market -- it's not really happening.

In San Jose and surrounding communities, Yelp's got reviews of businesses in about two dozen broad categories, but restaurants still dominate with 1,948 entries. Real estate has grown to become the 12th largest category, with 174 entries, generating more interest than, say, education (135) or religous organizations (30).

There are reviews of a couple dozen real estate agents in the region, and perhaps many more property managers and mortgage brokers. I say perhaps, because one businesses can be listed in several categories. If you search for "property management," for example you get more than 200 entries, but a lot them are for another category, "apartments" -- the actual complexes, and the reviews talk about what they're like to live in and how they're run.

Same for the category "mortgage brokers." A lot of the entries are actually "banks & credit unions," with reviewers covering mundane details about branch operations ("There are three ATM machines at this location, and all of them are 'out of order,' " one reviewer complains. "I know San Jose is the technology capital of the world, but don't the bank have a maintenance worker to immediately attend the problem?")

Search for "real estate agents" and that's pretty much what you get, but many of the agents only have one or two "reviews" -- some written by agents themselves. There are a couple of exceptions, including an agent in Cambell, Calif. who has 22 reviews from clients and colleagues. All but one are all laudatory -- wonder if she makes a point of asking folks to plug her?

As usual with these kinds of Web 2.0 sites, there are "reputation management" concerns. How much do you want to bet this agent doesn't know she has a Yelp profile -- complete with her address phone number, and a single, three-word review from a presumably disgruntled former client describing her as "Unprofessional and dishonest"?

The anonymous user who left that review -- "Apple M." (Yelp doesn't provide last names)-- got online one day in February, trashed three businesses, and hasn't been heard from since.

Yelp says it rarely yanks such reviews, so it's up to you to rebut them (although they caution you not to "lash out" at reviewers).

If Yelp is having a hard time insinuating itself into every corner of peoples' lives in Silicon Valley, it may have even farther to go in a place like Detroit, where the lone review in the real estate category is for a downtown loft (written by somebody who no longer lives there).

Want to try marketing yourself this way -- or see whether people are talking about you? Sites where consumers can review agents include Homethinking, Agentopolis, IncredibleAgents, MyAgentReview, JudysBook, and AngiesList.

You may be surprised that you're already listed on some of these sites, which may launch will a million or more names purchased from a vendor.

HUD's Ivy Jackson, Director of the Office of RESPA, is grilled by Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, at a hearing today on HUD's RESPA reform proposal.

Cuellar had concerns about costs and paperwork, and Jackson conceded small businesses would have $5,000 to $6,000 in up-front costs to comply with HUD's proposed changes to the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, adding about $98 to the cost of the average loan.

But Jackson said consumers would end up saving about $600 per loan because simplified disclosures will help them comparison shop and avoid costly features like prepayment penalties. More videos from the House Small Business Committee hearing, “RESPA and its Impact on Small Business.” Also prepared testimony from the Natonal Association of Realtors, American Land Title Association, Mortgage Bankers Association, National Association of Mortgage Brokers, and the Center for Responsible Lending,

Foreclosure is not just about losing your house -- if you have access to classified information, you run the risk of losing your security clearance, too.

A foreclosure process on a home, as a sign of financial distress, could be viewed as a warning sign to employers of folks who work in high-security jobs, a California Realtor tells Inman News. Not a good idea to have people in financial distress working in high-security jobs, right?

Here's an interesting case in which a facility security officer failed to report a deed in lieu of foreclosure and was denied clearance after a hearing by an administrative judge, though the case does not make it clear if this clearance would also have been denied if the deed in lieu of foreclosure had been properly reported.

U.S. State Department guidelines establish financial considerations in a person's access to classified information.

"Failure or inability to live within one's means, satisfy debts, and meet financial obligations may indicate poor self-control, lack of judgment, or unwillingness to abide by rules and regulations, all of which can raise questions about an individual's reliability, trustworthiness and ability to protect classified information," according to the guidelines.

"Inability or unwillingness to satisfy debts" and "indebtedness caused by frivolous or irresponsible spending and the absence of any evidence of willingness or intent to pay the debt or establish a realistic plan to pay the debt" are among the conditions that could "raise a security concern and may be disqualifying."

Maybe it's better for high-level security officials to rent than risk foreclosure?

As if recruiting real estate agents in a downturn weren't hard enough -- Lori Cox asks in an Inman Groups discussion how one goes about recruiting younger, Gen Y agents.

I've affectionately called them "Yutes" here because I saw a rare opportunity to quote Joe Pesci from "My Cousin Vinny" in a real estate blog post, and because it starts with "Y" - get it?

This discussion will likely become an ongoing thread for brokers. The National Association of Realtors released its latest member survey last week, which showed the typical Realtor is 52 years old, a world apart from the coveted Gen Y consumer who is somewhere in his or her mid-20s.

Since much of Gen Y speaks in weird text and instant messaging speak (do you know what TTYL, BFF and FTW mean?), it will be pretty important that agents know what the heck they are talking about. The obvious connection and reach for brokerage longevity will be to bring on more Gen Y agents. But that's easier said than done.

If you have some insight into recruiting "Yutes" into brokerage offices, cruise on over to the thread in the community section here.

Inquiring minds want to know.

Real estate Web sites' competition for eyeballs is getting serious -- Move Inc. is using eye-tracking studies to gauge how users interact with the redesigned Realtor.com site, now in beta.

Move Inc. officials, in a presentation today at the JP Morgan 36th Annual Technology Conference in Boston, will discuss the redesign and other company and industry developments.

The eye-tracking technology is a useful gauge for figuring out what consumers are paying the most attention to when visiting the Web site, said Errol Samuelson, Realtor.com president.

The technology features a camera that tracks eye movement, and Web page areas receive points in the test when the eyes linger there.

Tests of this technology on the existing Realtor.com site and the beta version of the site found that there is a 70 percent increase in view time at the new site, with 42 percent more properties viewed.

Employees at a research and development office that Move opened last year in California's Silicon Valley have had past experience using eye-tracking techniques, Samuelson said, and online companies like eBay and Google are among those that use the tests. (Note: the image here is from the film "Clockwork Orange," not from Move's R&D center.)

See this earlier blog post for some comments by Samuelson about online real estate.

Crude prices hit a record $127 a barrel today, helping kill a stock market rally that was fueled by a better-than-expected leading indicators report from the Conference Board (the report suggested that the economy has slowed down but is not in a recession).

While the stock market has been on a wild roller coaster ride for months now, rising oil and commodities prices could also hinder the recovery in housing markets by pushing up mortgage rates. Fears of inflation drive up bond yields -- including those used to finance mortgages, and the current boom in oil and other commodities has serious inflation ramifications.

It's hard to believe that less than a year ago -- when OPEC announced it would boost oil production in response to the mess the mortgage meltdown had made out of financial markets -- that oil was $76 a barrel. Oil prices seemed stratospheric at the time (they had more than doubled in two years) but warnings of $100-a-barrel oil might have seemed far-fetched.

Now there's talk of $200-a-barrel oil, but OPEC nations have been less sympathetic lately, saying the weak dollar is helping drive up prices (Saudi Arabia's pledge to boost production by 300,000 barrels a day has been seen as a token gesture -- see Bloomberg). The Fed's taken some of the blame for that. By slashing short-term interest rates in recent months, some say, Bernanke and Co. have helped devalue the dollar, pushing up the price of oil, food, and other commodities.

The Fed and the world's central banks are in a "preserve the economy or fight inflation" conundrum, with Asia, India, Russia, the Middle East and some emerging nations "in full-blown wage-price spiral and overheating beyond capacity," writes mortgage broker and Inman News columnist Lou Barnes.

Barnes says the Fed is doing what it has to -- trying to keep U.S. GDP from shrinking -- but that mortgage rates have surged in recent weeks and we shouldn't expect to see them back down in the fives again without a weakening economy. Bankers, he says, are hoping the slowdown in the U.S. and Europe "will spread to Asia, breaking commodity and food prices, and perhaps mortgage rates as well."

Rising oil prices may be a boon for Gulf Coast and "oil patch" states, but rising mortgage rates will reduce the buying power of house hunters, putting more downward pressure on prices. Although prices may still need to come down in some markets to make home ownership attainable for average folks, buyers won't get off the sidelines until there's some stability.

Maybe that's fine for folks like the Clampetts or anybody who can put cash on the table when they go house hunting in Beverly Hills, but for the rest of us higher oil prices are going to be felt at other places than the gas pump.

Remember the infamous "Mission Accomplished" photo op President Bush took in 2003 in his flight gear giving the thumbs up on the he war in Iraq?

That was the image that came to mind after reading the latest forecast today from National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yun.

I'm all for optimism, but sometimes this outlook can tip into the realm of an irresponsible take on reality given a person's leadership position in the business world.

Let's take a look:

Recession

Yun says the recession is not happening. "A slowdown, yes, but the definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. It's not in the cards - no matter how you look at it," he said.

OK, we'll give him the technical on this. But let's not kid ourselves -- things are not good. Thousands of jobs have evaporated already this year and the price of gas is at an astounding average $3.787 per gallon nationwide as of today.

U.C. Berkeley economist Kenneth Rosen at a conference last week said we're in recession already and that there is a 45 percent chance for a deep recession, which could mean the loss of 4 million jobs and a rise in the unemployment rate to 7 percent. Rosen gives a 50 percent chance to this recession remaining mild, and a 5 percent chance to a quick recovery.

Housing market

Yun says, "Foreclosures are being driven principally by subprime loans."

"In fact, if you look at where home prices fell the most, it's the markets where subprime loans were prevalent," Yun said. Cape Coral, Fla.; Detroit; Las Vegas; Miami; Orlando, Fla.; Phoenix and Riverside, Calif., were among the cities with a high percentage of subprime lending and where the markets suffered the biggest downturns, he explained.

Yes, all markets are local and some are doing fine. But as a whole, the nation's real estate market is still in a depressed state and the numbers show no bottom yet.

Here's the latest quarterly reading right from NAR's own machine:

Total sales of resale single-family homes and condos reached a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.95 million units in the first quarter, which was down 22.2 percent below the 6.36 million rate in first-quarter 2007 and down 0.9 percent from 5 million in fourth-quarter 2007.

For prices, NAR said that 28 of 149 U.S. metro areas tracked had double-digit percentage declines in median resale single-family home prices in the first quarter compared to first-quarter 2007, and the overall median price dropped at a record 7.7 percent from a year ago.

One hundred of the metro areas had price declines, according to the report, while prices rose in 48 metro areas and remained flat in Honolulu.

Context

Yun says, "It's important to keep things in context," and we couldn't agree more. That's why we feel lost when he goes on to make predictions for an upturn at the end of the year:

Today, Yun says that most of the country are poised for improvement in the second half of 2008. You can't blame him for being optimistic, but we fail to see any evidence that would support this prediction. He says the recovery will vary by market -- and this is no doubt true, just as the downturn varied by market.

But then this price forecast:

Middle-America cities that performed evenly over the past few years - like Cincinnati, Milwaukee and the Kansas City, Mo., area - are likely to experience home price gains in the 20 to 30 percent range over the next five years, while markets like Miami, Las Vegas and Phoenix could see prices go up as much as 50 percent during that time period, Yun said.

That raised a red flag with us. Miami, Las Vegas and Phoenix haven't even seen a bottom in price declines, yet they are going to fall a little further and then make up the difference by 50 percent within five years? Maybe he is basing this on pent-up demand.

Check out the latest quarterly numbers from NAR here.

Approval ratings

As with President Bush's all-time-low approval ratings, I couldn't help but think NAR is wrestling with the same problem after seeing this uber-rosy forecast. After the full-page newspaper ads in the fall of 2006 proclaiming it was the best time to buy or sell a home, it's hard for many believe what they read from this group now since that actually marked a significant slide in value for most markets -- 10%, 15%, 20% -- over the following six months to a year.

It's easy to pick on Yun. He has a tough job; all economists do. We don't claim that we could do any better. We just think it's time NAR's top economist gave a realistic outlook for members and for the general public. Only then will consumers invest trust in this organization.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would provide the funding to protect taxpayers against anticipated losses from a $300 billion expansion of FHA loan guarantee programs, under a compromise being worked out today between Senate lawmakers, Reuters reports.

The controversial plan for the Federal Housing Administration to guarantee refis for troubled borrowers -- approved by the House last week and part of Senate legislation backed by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn. -- would be supported by an affordable housing fund that's envisioned in the GSE reform bill passed by the House last year.

The fund would raise about $500 million a year by hitting up Fannie and Freddie ("the GSEs") for an amount equal to 1.2 basis points of their outstanding mortgages.

Sen. Richard Shelby, ranking Republican on Dodd's Senate Banking Committee, is said to oppose an expansion of FHA loan guarantee programs at taxpayer expense.

While most of the program's costs would be funded by mortgage insurance premiums paid by borrowers, the Congresssional Budget Office has estimated that taxpayers might be on the hook for $1.7 billion in losses if the program helped 500,000 borrowers over the next five years. Having Fannie and Freddie foot the bill could assuage Shelby, sources told Reuters.

The Bush administration has threatened to veto the plan, put forward by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., in March. Frank said today that Bush's veto threat was just that -- a threat -- and that he remains hopeful the Senate will reach a compromise.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Bruce Curington, a Realtor for Rossum & Neal Real Estate in Rapid City, S.D., who is attending a National Association of Realtors conference here this week, said home prices and sales have risen year-over-year in Rapid City.

For-sale inventory is up, though, compared to last year, and financing is tougher now for some buyers but foreclosures aren't a factor as they are in some other market areas, he said. "Interest rates are down, but it's a little harder for buyers because no one's giving away mortgages anymore," he said.

Foreclosure data provider RealtyTrac reported this week that South Dakota had the second-lowest rate of foreclosure filings per household among all states in April, with one foreclosure filing for every 14,657 households.

Curington noted that the Rapid City region is home to such landmarks as Mt. Rushmore, Devil's Tower and the controversial, partially completed Crazy Horse Monument.

The Rapid City area didn't experience the high rate of appreciation that some other markets saw during the real estate run-up, he said, and some older homes are still selling for about $100,000 though there has been a rise in luxury homes in the region selling for over $1 million.

The National Association of Realtors reported that single-family resale home sales fell 13.2 percent statewide in North Dakota in the first quarter compared to first-quarter 2007. Prices were up 2.7 percent in the Bismarck, S.D., area year-over-year in the first quarter, NAR also reported, though the association doesn't track data for the Rapid City area.