Thanksgiving and just being busy in general interrupted my chain of posts I wanted to do upon my return from the NAR convention in Orlando. My first part was some overall opinions on some points where I see a disconnect between NAR, the common Realtor, the consumer, and the marketplace. For this post I’m focusing a little more on what I heard. The third and final post of this series will involve the more fun aspect of the meetings and being at convention.
My trip to Orlando started early as MOR is a member of the Pinnacle Group which is partially funded and supported by NAR in an effort to lay the groundwork for the next generation of associations. In fact a lot of the inspiration for my first blog came from this one day meeting which I attended. This day-long meeting took place in a large conference room and there were about 60 real estate boards from across the nation represented there. Many of which were some of the more influential boards at a local level such as the Houston Association and Peoria (Missoula is often associated with the two). This event laid the groundwork for the next 2 years that this program will work on. I wouldn’t do much justice to the overall message to sum it up in a blog post. However here’s the main points; the market has changed, the consumer is changing, the non-Realtor providers (Zillow, Trulia, etc) have changed, but only a few Realtors and hardly any real estate associations have changed to meet the demands of this new market. The main points were on survival and while the timeline could be debated the group was presented with the theory that within the next 4 years 40% of all Realtor associations will be entirely irrelevant across the US. We did a lot of group work and discussions and I quickly realized how progressive the Missoula Association of Realtors really is. I found that some large urban-area associations don’t even have public facing websites. Other major area associations are seeing non-Realtor members become the new majority. Beyond that I sat at a table where one board’s crowning achievement was a black-tie gala and another hung their hat on some “fun” education events. Meanwhile in Missoula we’re working to empower our brokers through strong public-policy advocacy, market research, consumer profiles, and community connections and videos that show hyper-local info on specific neighborhoods. So yeah, I couldn’t help but come out of that meeting with a lot of pride in my home organization.
After the Pinnacle Group meeting there was a day off, so to say, and then I had two very full days of meetings before heading home. Since I’m not on a national committee this year I had the freedom to attend meetings for the general membership instead of committee work, which was fun. On the first day I got a lot of great economic information. There was a great event where NAR’s chief economist Lawrence Yun and an economic advisor with Wells Fargo were discussing what to expect moving forward. The general message was to expect higher sales volume, higher inflation (but not super scary/bad inflation), less foreclosures in the market, and rising interest rates. It appears that NAR and the big banks are now projecting that they see the light at the end of the tunnel and the nation is lifting itself up off “the floor.” The best bargains now have a shelf-life and those great deals are going to start slipping away more and more as median prices rise, costs of living rise, and interest rates rise. Oddly enough there was no mention of any double dip and only marginal fears of the dreaded fiscal cliff. I also attended a class on generational selling gaps (which I talked more about in my first blog) and a class on increasing personal productivity.
Day two was highlighted with a huge political discussion between Major Garrett and Charlie Cook. There was a lot of reflection considering this was just 4 days after the election but there was also some looking ahead. The fiscal cliff and debt ceiling dominated the discussions. Both thought that Congress can probably “kick the can” on the debt ceiling for a few more years, easily. They assumed that this will be the case too, real debt ceiling talks won’t happen anytime soon. Fiscal cliff talks were also interesting. I think it was Charlie Cook who made a good point, he said that if you see the President and House Leader Boehner in the public, making statements, giving speeches, doing that stuff – it’s bad. It’s bad because it means they’re not behind the scenes working to get a compromise done. As I type this the first “shot across the bow” publicly has occurred and both sides have gone public… which has me worried of course. Garrett pointed out that the President needs to really improve his communication with Congress, even within his own party. It was pointed out that he rarely meets with Congressional leaders and has basically asked two very polarizing figures (Pelosi and Reid) to be his talking pieces. Garrett also pointed out that another thing that’s being largely ignored publicly is the Dodd-Frank act which comes into full force early in 2013, which will put newer restrictions and regulations on the banks (as well as other entities) and could be a major political piece early in the year. One of the more profound statements came from Charlie Cook, he pointed out that if the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling, or Dodd-Frank (or something else) is not tackled and it leads to a new recession this will be direct fault of both parties failing to compromise. “It will be a recession forced upon the American people perpetrated by their own politicians.”
Day two I also attended the large general session. It was long and boring. Moe Veissi had some nice encouraging things to say – he’s been a very good president on the public side. There was a long and drawn out recognition of the other countries that Realtors have offices/partners in, we saw each state’s Realtor of the Year, and then there was a motivational speech. The speech was the long part, I wound up leaving, it felt forced and after a while it lost my interest. Additionally before both the political discussion and the general session I hit a working group on the RPR upgrades.
I missed the 3rd main day of events as I headed home. Overall the info I collected was pretty darn good and has really helped me to gain perspective on things I’m hearing/reading nationally right now. I shared a lot of it on my Facebook page as well so my fellow Realtors back in Missoula could get the info as well. I had a great time at most of these and I can say in each and every class/event I attended I had a lot of good takeaways.
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