1:54 Californians is a Realtor > Rexroad.com

For professional reasons I regularly read the Desert Sun newspaper from Palm Springs. This article caught my eye today.

Several years ago I remember reading about how the real estate industry was having such a huge rise that it was not sorting out the poor business people.

Now that the real estate market is not so hot I think we will see some of the market riders get tossed off the horse. When things are tight you find out who the really good business people are.

The real estate market is about to find that out.

Comments

By The Realist @ Sunday, April 15, 2007 10:03 PM

It was easy money for a while. Agents could just show up to work and sell several houses a month without trying. The same goes for mortgage brokers, especially with the sub-prime lending slowing down. Good post.

By Bobby Harris @ Monday, April 16, 2007 5:09 PM

Matt is quite right to note with great interest, the fact that so very many realtors exist in this state. I wonder what this proportion is in other states (likely high in NY, FL, AZ). It seems to me that this dynamic reveals an over-commodification of housing, which is so fundamental to society.

Whenever housing prices fall, there is a (media-saturated) panic among some folks. But the fact is that ever increasing housing costs are preventing a majority of persons from owning a home, “the american dream,” or nightmare, depending on the circumstances these days.

Unless housing values fall significantly, or another basic housing paradigm is soon created, any future of achieving “the american dream” is truly fraudulent for most of us.

Instead of any sign of relief though, what’s happening now in the Legislature is an emerging war between two huge and powerful lobbies that are usually great partners, over how best to slice up the withering, financial margins of housing development.

Builders and realtors are at each others throats because the recent squeezing-up of the market has closed the comfort zone on this housing commodification game.

Realtors have had a bill introduced (SB 670, Correa) which would ban what’s being alternately described as a “tax” or a “fee,” depending on whose pork is on the legislative butcher’s block.

To placate various forms of opposition from advocacies representing environmental and affordable housing interests, builders have agreed to covenants attached to sales that they term, “reconveyance fees,” which require a certain percentage of each subsequent sale of the housing to set be set aside, accounted to a fund, and then allocated to either environmental or affordability purposes.

In other words, when housing is (first) bought from the builders / developers, this fee isn’t paid, but is instead passed along within the future price of this housing.

The realtors have suddenly decided that this fee is in reality a “private transfer tax,” that directly inhibits progress in their own profession, which is primarily concerned with those subsequent sales.

Realtors say that adding this tax depresses home affordability, and it’s a “tax,” so it has to go away (by means of -- economically leveraged -- expressed legislative intent, rather than a potentially even more expensive legal battle - over relevant differences between taxes and fees).

This bill is a vivid example of the disastrous condition of the housing paradigm in California. These two natural allies are scrambling to undo each other at the economic margins, a usually allied monopoly or sorts, forced into political combat over the literal scraps of the dead carcass of state housing policy.

California’s residents need better political leadership, in order to return “the american dream” to reality.

By Charlie in Japan @ Tuesday, April 17, 2007 1:46 AM

My thoughts on the above (As you might hear defined on the O'Reilly Factor)

blo•vi•ate
Pronunciation: 'blO-vE-"At
Function: intransitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -at•ed; -at•ing
Etymology: perhaps irregular from 1blow
: to speak or write verbosely and windily

You must be logged in to post a comment. You can login here