Live from the National Association of REALTORS® Conference

The National Association of REALTORS® Conference and Expo kicks off in San Francisco this morning. The Residential Economic Issues and Trends Forum will begin at 8:30 a.m. Pacific-time, and we will be live blogging the presentation. In it, NAR’s Chief Economist, Lawrence Yun, will present the latest updates on issues that are currently impacting the residential market and his perspectives on their impact as we head into 2014. Two other industry experts, John Krainer from the San Francisco Federal Reserve Board and Zan Monroe from the Fayetteville Regional Association of REALTORS®, will join him to discuss techniques for identifying inventory trends, record low interest rates and how housing inventory dynamics have a robust impact on both home values and mortgage finance.

9:50 am – Zan Monroe is the opening speaker for the day and will be discussing the understanding of real estate markets. Zan consults, writes, records, and presents live to thousands each year about life balance, business systems, mastery, marketing, management and real estate investing.

• He is very adamant that the three cardinal rules of real estate are, “location, location, location.”
• He also says that houses are often listed based on historical data (comparable sales), but in reality they should be like every other product that follows a supply and demand model.
• “If a house is on the market for 35-days or more, the market has rejected it. It’s probably overpriced.”

10:00 am – Next speaker up is John Krainer from the San Francisco Federal Reserve Board and he’ll be discussing the Economic Outlook and Housing.

• He states that low interest rates are contributing to the rebound in housing construction.
• “Housing price appreciation has been robust and sales and inventories have not been growing as expected.”
• He says that usually as listing prices go up, inventory goes up as well, but that isn’t happening in the current market. One reason for this is that sellers don’t want to compete with foreclosures, but the number of foreclosures are going down. Another reason for this, is that the demand for rental properties is going up while the desire for ownership is going down.

10:30 am – The next speaker will be NAR’s Chief Economist Lawrence Yun and he will present the latest updates on issues that are currently impacting the residential market and his perspectives on their impact as we head into 2014. Note: Just announced there were 21,000 REALTORS® in attendance today!

• The U.S. is currently seeing a market turnaround. Twenty per cent cumulative increase in home sales activity over the last two years.
• “The market is recovering, but minimal increase in the number of REALTORS®.”
• “Real estate market is bouncing back, but income isn’t. Affordability is falling to a five-year low. However, this is the fifth best affordability condition in 40-years.”
• Yun says that mortgages have been performing outstanding not because of U.S. government policy decisions, but because of home price increases.
• “Buyer enthusiasm has fallen in the past five months. Had been rising for the two years prior to that. Could be because of the looming U.S. government shutdown.”
• Yun says the U.S. is still short 6-8 million jobs to return to pre-recession normalcy.

11:05 – That about wraps it up for the morning session here. Here’s hoping that this gave Alberta industry professionals a sense of the market landscape from our neighbours to the south.