David Lereah Respond's To Moody's Housing at Tipping Point
David Lereah responded to Moody's negative report on Housing at Tipping Point:
David Lereah, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, disagrees with the severity of the price downturn in the report.Is Mr. Lereah saying that if people's retirement did not depend on the housing market then he would use the term 'crash' like Moody's did? If the housing market was indeed based on fundamentals, in the bubble markets using the term 'crash' would not become a 'self-fulfilling prophecy.'
"It's possible we could go under zero, if you include prices of new homes" along with sales data for existing homes, he said. "For existing homes, I'm still predicting that prices will be above [last year] by 2 percent."
Nonetheless, Lereah agreed that broad price declines in some regions are unavoidable.
"I don't think I would use the word `crash,'" he said. "When you use a word like that, it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy in the housing market. These are people's homes. Their retirement is depending on it."
Mr. Lereah, you were one of the housing cheerleaders who encouraged people down this dangerous path. You even wrote two books promoting the housing boom. As Ben Jones wrote "Maybe the NAR should have been urging caution the past few years instead of cheering prices higher."
posted by David @ 5:06 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
The unbelievable and unmitigated nerve of Lereah! Now he's trying to protect those poor homeowners who have been relying on their home equity for retirement.
Where was his sympathy for all those who were priced out of home ownership due to the housing bubble he and others championed?
Where was his sympathy for families who went into debt over their heads...encouraged by the likes of Lereah and his NAR colleagues.
I'm not worried about those planning for retirement unless they were foolish enough to borrow against the equity in their home. The gains in housing were always paper gains, as much as Lereah and others tried to claim otherwise.
Boom/bust economics is a destructive force -- it destroys the long-term stability of communities and entire nations. The psychological effects of a whole nation of people realizing they've been conned will have far-reaching implications.
For people like David Lereah and his army of glad-handing realtors, the housing bubble was a convenient opportunity to push record numbers of buyers into homes they couldn't afford they couldn't afford.
The media would be doing the public a great service by exposing not only the truth about the housing bubble, but about the instrumental role that Lereah and the NAR played in support of it for their own gain.
I want to examine his back if he has a backbone. The guy is pretty flexible to carry one. LOL
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