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The Steep Fall of the Housing Boom's Top Bull

January 12, 2009 RSS Feed Print

The Wall Street Journal has a sobering look at the post-housing bust life of Ex-National Association of Realtors chief economist David Lereah:

Once one of the world's most-visible housing experts, Mr. Lereah is disconnected from his old life. The former chief economist for the National Association of Realtors says the group's top executives won't return his phone calls. He says he wasn't invited to the association's 100th birthday bash last May.

Today he works out of his home, in an office that also serves as an exercise room.

He charges $495 annually for [his weekly housing market] newsletter, and currently has fewer than 50 paying subscribers -- a number Mr. Lereah aims to increase to 1,500 by the end of this year.

"He's starting to make some money off it now, not much," says Mrs. Lereah. "We have an expensive lifestyle: a big house, a housekeeper once a week, college tuitions, the country club."

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The reason NAR is snubbing him is because he has come out and said that he canno longer support the party line about how good the housing market is going to be (he obviously had to say it was great when he was the chief economist for NAR and getting the fat check from them every 2 weeks. (this has been being said for the last 14 months). NAR does not want any negative articles or comments from their minions about how bad it is.....no sales, no commissions, no more REALTORS paying dues..
Ken
RE Broker for 31 years in CO.

Ken Zablotny of CO 7:15PM January 13, 2009

All this talk of the housing market bubble. How much of a bubble are we going to see from the commercial and retail contractors who are leveraged pretty good when businesses aren't filling up their property spaces? Or how about municiple and corporate bond markets as more and more municipalities and companies are on the verge of deciding to go bankrupt? Who bails them out? Who gets stuck with the loss on those investments? Couple that with Democrats wanting to raise taxes and spend even more trillions that are yet to be created on the printing presses of the Federal Reserve. Instead of talking about the Weimer Duetsch Marks we will be talking about the B.H.Obama Bucks

Jeff of WI 9:00PM January 12, 2009

this artilce is a tease - looking for some bad news/gossip on someone who earned $$$$ in housing & lost that income. But what's the real story? This guy was PAID $$$$$ to say good things about Real Estate values. If he said the bust was coming do you think he'd still have a job?
Buyer beware & trust but verify & always get a second or third opinion when your financial health is on the line.
If this man, and many others like the auto maker CEOs who did not resign, had any integrity he'd have resigned for his failure to perform acceptably AND he's be using his assets to help those he hurt. Nope, I'm not holding my breath for anyone to do that but I won't respect anyone who doesn't livr by his word.

C Warden of IL 6:19PM January 12, 2009

The Steep Fall of the Housing Boom's Top Bull

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