Jon Strum

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The reason you shouldn't proclaim 2008 as "the best year to buy a home in 35 years" is that people won't believe you. Regardless of your data. Because fear is emotion-driven, and until we acknowledge how buyers out there are feeling today, we have very little chance of putting ourselves in a position to help them. Some might suggest that providing "objective information" is the way to defuse fear. But, as some of these comments attest, your "objective information" is someone else's "deceptive marketing." It will remain an extraordinary goal for realtors to reclaim their credibility (because if we ever had it, we've lost it over the past 6-9 months) without simply acknowledging that things are a mess in the housing market. And then listening to our buyers as they vent their fears and frustrations. And then simply asking them what they'd like to do. It's not a sexy-sounding strategy, but I'm confident that it will put you light years ahead of those agents who are lip-syncing to the NAR's "It's a great time to buy a home!" or the strategy posted above. Instead of "pushing home buyers off the fence now", why not simply offer a hand and see if you can help them down?

Over the past several months, tens of thousands of people in the mortgage, title and escrow industries have lost their jobs. Homes have lost value so fast that the companies and organizations that track home values have never witnessed anything like it. Last week, a major investment bank failed. And the bank's failure was mildly papered over by rescue efforts on behalf of the Fed which required the Fed to use powers it hadn't exercised since 1933. And we haven't even touched upon foreclosures that are uprooting thousands of families while pressuring housing prices down even further. These are the facts, folks. What we're seeing is NOT business as usual. It is the largest financial hiccup in modern history. And our industry's response? The NAR's "now is a great time to buy" campaign, which just comes off as totally ridiculous to anyone who can think. How should the media be covering this horrible convergence of events? Are we, as a group, so ethically blind that we would want the media to soften their coverage out of respect for our advertising dollars? That's not the way it works. I can't believe that at this stage of the game it needs to be said, but the faster our industry acknowledges the pain people are going through, the faster we will have taken the very first step toward earning some credibility. The truth is, that it's pefectly understandable to find buyers on the fence. It's perfectly logical to find people who want to wait until the smoke clears. Why fight the reality of the market? And why attack the news media for reporting it? As realtors, it makes us look as small-minded and self-interested as many people already think we are. Jon Strum President, homsho www.LARealEstateBlog.com

Joe, it seems as though "justice" was apparently served in the outcome of the case. Foxton's is entitled to set its commission rate and others are entitled to express their opinions about it. I'm much more concerned over the "minimum service law" that amounts to little more than NAR-sponsored protectionism and restraint of trade. Rather than legislate against anyone's business model, why not let the market decide? You may think that, "You can really get screwed up if you've never bought or sold and just do it with no guidance..." but that perspective assumes that a client is receiving better "guidance" based upon the amount of commission that they pay. I think we can all name at least one agent from a "full service" firm that collets their commission and probably doesn't provide much guidance to their clients. It's a reasonable fact of life. Why legislate to protect his brokerage from fair competition?