Notorious R.O.B.

It may be completely inappropriate to compare the life-and-death work of our military in Afghanistan to the buying and selling of real estate ensconced in our safety… but I could not help but read this with interest:

We also must strive to be first with the truth. We need to beat the insurgents and extremists to the headlines and to pre-empt rumors. We can do that by getting accurate information to the chain of command, to our Afghan partners, and to the press as soon as is possible.Integrity is critical to this fight. Thus, when situations are bad, we should freely acknowledge that fact and avoid temptations to spin. Rather, we should describe the setbacks and failures we suffer and then state what we’ve learned from them and how we’ll adjust to reduce the chances of similar events in the future. (Emphasis added)

That is from a recent speech that General David Petraeus gave at the Munich Security Conference talking about the very real, very serious problems of fighting Al Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan.

But if he were speaking at just about any real estate industry conference, I don’t know that those words would be any different.

How often have we heard condemnations of NAR, and specifically of David Lereah, former Chief Economist for NAR?  There are even whole websites set up to rant at Mr. Lereah.

And according to at least one real estate professional, David Lereah and the whole ‘head-in-sand’ approach to the RE market hurt her directly by undermining the credibility of the profession, forcing her to un-educate then re-educate consumers, and establish her own credibility as a realtor.

What’s more, not one big brokerage or big brand in real estate was sounding the alarm back in 2005 or so, while individual realtors were starting to get real skeptical of home values, and blogs like Patrick.net were in full bubble-warning mode in 2005.

What has that done to the brand image of all Realtors?  What has the failure to freely acknowledge that situations are bad, the failure of so-called ‘real estate experts’ to warn about the housing bubble, the failure of so-called ‘mortgage experts’ to warn about the credit bubble, and the failure of so-called ‘ethical professionals with fiduciary duty to clients’ to properly advise buyers during what was obviously a bubble done to the industry?

Post-bubble, has there been any major statement by NAR or by a major brokerage acknowledging the “setbacks and failures” and stating “what they’ve learned from them and how they’ll adjust to reduce the chances of similar events in the future”?  If so, I missed it. Read the rest of this entry »