I cover mortgages, title insurance and real estate services for Inman News. Have a story idea or comment? Please call or drop me a line at matt@inman.com.
In addition to their ability to get homes listed in the MLS, another reason Owners.com and other "FSBO" sites work with brokers is so that listings will appear on Realtor.com.
From Owners.com:
"Only licensed real estate agents can place homes on Realtor.com. We have a nationwide network of experienced flat fee agents who will prepare the paperwork and place your home on Realtor.com. They do not charge a commission; your only cost is a one-time fee of $295 for the service."
Alaska and Nebraska regulators went after a California broker who was taking out of state listings for ForSaleByOwner.com.
PIMCO Managing Director Bill Gross thinks low interest rates may actually constrain borrowing in 2012. Financial markets "are slowly imploding -- delevering -- because there’s too much paper and too little trust," Gross says in his January investment outlook.
"Zero-bound money -- credit quality aside -- creates no incentive to expand it. Will Rogers once fondly said in the Depression that he was more concerned about the return of his money than the return on his money. But from a system-wide perspective, when the return on money becomes close to zero in nominal terms and substantially negative in real terms, then normal functionality may breakdown."
The operating expenses of money market funds, for example, make them "perpetually unprofitable" at current yields. As investors pull money their money out of those funds, that means there's less money available to fund commercial paper -- short term loans to businesses. Banks "no longer aggressively pursue deposits," Gross says, because its hard to make a profit lending that money out after paying their overhead expenses. "It is no coincidence that tens of thousands of layoffs are occurring in the banking industry, and that branch expansion is reversing industry-wide."
If returns for investors are low but risks remain high, then the system "de-levers," Gross says.
"If an investor has money on deposit with an investment bank/broker that not only appears to be at risk but returns nothing, then why maintain the deposit? Perhaps an investor would be more comfortable with a $100 bill at home in a mattress than a $100 bill on deposit with a broker – Securities Investor Protection Corporation notwithstanding. If so, system wide delevering takes place as opposed to the credit extension historically necessary for an expanding economy."
Hello Jed and Craig. This is our fourth article since February on the benchmarking issue. The first two articles addressed the use of the Census to benchmark in 2000.
Craig, NAR has not placed any blame on "the quality of the US Census data." The issue has been what happens in the 10 years between benchmarking.
When NAR rebenchmarked in 2000, it found it had underestimated sales by 13 percent, and revised 1990s data accordingly.
The fact remains that even if NAR had been able to use the 2010 Census to rebenchmark, they would still have had to revise their data back to 2007.
That raises the question whether a system that can only be rebenchmarked once a decade is a good system. NAR says now that it can no longer use the Census for benchmarking, it will rebenchmark more often.
Jed, the story does not assert that NAR "is damaged" by rebenchmarking. It notes that the national headlines about rebenchmarking "could damage the trade group's credibility."
For four years, NAR published statistics on existing home sales that overstated those sales by 14 percent. If the general public does not understand the issues involved in benchmarking, some may conclude that NAR deliberately overstated existing home sales in order to put a more positive spin on the downturn. There's plenty of commentary on news articles and blogs indicating that some people have, in fact, reached such conclusions.
In every article Inman News has published on the subject, we have attempted to explain the benchmarking issues to our readers. The story above, although it does not explain the process used to benchmark against the Census in 2000, lists the reasons given by NAR for the benchmark "drift": that FSBO sales declined, that more new home sales crept into MLS data, that some properties listed on more than one MLS were double counted, and that house flipping also contributed to NAR's overestimating existing home sales.
See also previous stories:
Decline in real estate sales greater than stated? (Feb. 15, 2011)
NAR overestimated home sales (Nov. 14, 2011)
NAR to release revised home-sale stats (Dec. 19, 2011)
