After encouraging flippers to game the system for years (so realtors could make their comissions), NOW the NAR and Lawrence Yun say no to flipping

I guess the NAR will send a letter to A&E to take down all their Flip This House type shows, I guess they'll apologize for TCDL's books, I guess they'll instruct their 1.2 million ramen eaters to not take flippers as clients, or to flip houses themselves, and I guess they'll apologize for their cheerleading these past few years which SHOUTED to anyone who would listen than housing was a slam dunk investment that would soar in value.

Or I guess not.

Here's TCLY, coming clean and trying to sound like a wise old sage, when knowing what we know now, he just sounds the fool. Especially to the millions of families who are losing their homes because of the NAR's bubble.

“Home buyers today are purchasing for the long term, generally with a realistic expectation of modest gains over time,” Yun says.

“Housing first and foremost is shelter. Second, it’s a long-term investment that slowly builds the greatest amount of wealth for most families. It’s good that we’re getting beyond the tendency of some buyers to view housing as a temporary asset to accumulate short-term wealth, which is not to be expected in a normal market.”

Oh, the wise sage then added:

“If it weren’t for a favorable economic backdrop, housing would probably have a hard landing,” Yun says. “As it is, we see this as a soft landing with home sales rising gradually in the second half of the year and prices recovering a bit later.”

It's official - Lawrence Yun is a distorting, deceptive spinmeister, just like TCDL

It didn't take TCLY long to pick up for TCDL. You wonder if there's a training class for NAR "economists" - called "how to lie, deceive, distort and spin".

When's the book coming out Larry? Maybe "Housing Crash My Ass - Why Housing Prices Will Soar! - The Fundamentals Don't Matter" or something like that.

I could just imagine the scene of this realtor luncheon (brown bags - nice. Ramen noodles next time?). And there you have Larry Yun, tellin' 'em what they want to hear. Versus this little thing called 'the truth' that most of us would expect to hear from an 'economist'.

Folks, the NAR is a discredited joke of an institution, run by monkeys, and now represented by TCLY.

He's down on the mat, he's bloody, the fans are booing. But can the Tampa Bay area housing market rise from the arena as the Comeback Kid?

You can bet the house on it, said Lawrence Yun, senior economist at the National Association of Realtors.

Yun was appointed last month as the top economic spokesman for the Washington-based Realtors group. He succeeded economist David Lereah, discredited after maintaining rosy outlooks amid an increasingly troubled housing market and promoting his 2005 book, Are You Missing The Real Estate Boom - Why Home Values and Other Real Estate Investments Will Climb Through the End of the Decade.

In a slide show Thursday to the Greater Tampa Association of Realtors, Yun delivered a message of short-term pain leading to long-term gain.

"Five years from now you will be very happy you're in this business and located in Tampa," Yun said over a brown-bag lunch to about 75 real estate agents.

In Yun's view, rising incomes and declining home prices ought to have stimulated sales this year were it not for housing bubble scares in the media.

In one worst-case scenario, an economist suggested the gap between incomes and home prices would depress housing values 40 percent.

Yun scoffed at the idea: The real measure of affordability, he said citing a formula, is mortgage obligation relative to income. He clicked a slide showing Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater hovering at the national average. Much of California isn't so lucky, nor is high-priced Miami and Naples.

"It's very, very manageable. Nothing alarming in this region," Yun said.

OK folks, time for a little street theatre. We're gonna send ramen noodles to Lawrence Yun at the NAR

You know the little guys are hurting - with home sales cratering, and realtors (and the NAR) completely discredited and disintermediated, it's time for... The HousingPANIC "Realtors are People Too" Top Ramen Drive

Here's all you have to do:

Pick up a few packages of ramen at your local store, and send 'em off to:

Lawrence Yun
National Association of Realtors
430 N Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL 60611

Include a note "Keep up the great work Lawrence! Your lies and spin make us laugh every day! Love, your friends at HousingPANIC". Or just do your own thing. He'll get the point.

Post here if you've sent a package off, and I hope he finds a fair way to distribute the goodies to the 1.2 million hungry little guys. At least they'll get something for their NAR dues.

Lawrence Yun is bad with math

What a flaming idiot. In recent commentary for a NAR's online real estate journal, TCLY had this gem of wisdom:

The word “correction” is a misnomer applied all too frequently in a misleading way. What homeowners and homebuyers are monitoring is principally where home prices have been and where they are headed. Nationally, the median home price rose 1 percent last year – that on top of the 53 percent rise during the five-year boom from 2000 to 2005. This year, the national median price is expected to fall 1 percent.

By any standards, it is an extreme stretch to call it a correction when a particular asset price rises better than 50 percent and then retreats one percent. Even a relatively large price decline of 12 percent in Sarasota cannot reasonably be considered as a correction when its local market had a 150 percent price increase during the boom. Let’s see, that is 150 steps forward and 12 steps backwards.

Take a look closely at Mr. Lawrence Yun's comparison about steps. If someone is on a stairway and at step 100, then you have a 150% increase in the number of stairs climbed. That would take them to step 250. Then suddenly they fall 12%, which would take take them back to stair 220. Which would represent an increase of 120% (from the original 100 stairs).

According to Yun, they would take 150 steps forward and then 12 steps back which would put the on step 238 (250- 12). 238 does not equal 220. Mr. Yun comparison is deceiving and bad with math.

Or heck, more importantly, how about this simple math: Buy a home for $500,000, it falls 12% in value or $60,000. You're screwed.

Corrupt dot-com poster boy Henry Blodget compares housing crash rhetoric & predictions to dot-com crash. Is Yun the new Blodgett?

Man, if this ain't the pot calling the kettle black, but maybe he's found jesus. Henry Blodget, the dot-com guru you remember, who was publicly pumping internet stocks while privately calling them hunks of junk, and was eventually discredited and convicted of fraud, well, he's throwing Lawrence Yun and the discredited NAR to the wolves.

But I guess the guy knows what he's talking about - he WAS Lawrence Yun just a few years ago...

Henry Blodget - NAR: Don't Worry, Housing Prosperity Just Around Corner

I can't help but note the similarities between the dotcom-crash rhetoric/predictions back in 2000 and the housing-crash rhetoric/predictions in the last 12 months.

Those of you who had the misfortune to live through the dotcom crash will recall that I and other analysts correctly predicted that there would be a slowdown and shakeout, but drastically underestimated its severity and duration.

All the way down, we kept revising forecasts (read: cutting estimates) to previously inconceivable levels, and each time we cut them, we reiterated our expectation that the inevitable trough and upturn was about six months away.

It wasn't until two years after the shakeout began, when half of online advertising revenue had evaporated and more than 75% of the companies in the sector had keeled over that the downturn finally ended... And by that time, most of us were so demoralized that we'd stopped predicting that there would ever be an upturn.

Housing obviously won't experience as deep a correction as the dotcoms did, but I haven't heard a single persuasive argument explaining why this downturn won't look like every previous housing downturn: i.e., will last a lot longer and drop much farther than most people think -- until price/rent and price/income ratios return to or below their long-term trend.

Instead, all I hear are arguments like this one, which are based not on long-term historical trends, but on short-term bubble-year pricing and price trends (arguments I am very familiar with, having made similar ones in late 2000 and early 2001):

"Overall housing levels are historically strong, but sales remain sluggish compared to the recent boom," said Lawrence Yun, NAR senior economist, in a statement. "Home sales will probably fluctuate in a narrow range in the short run, but gradually trend upward with improving activity by the end of the year," Yun added. Existing home sales are projected to rise 3.7% in 2008, to 6.41 million, according to NAR's forecast.

Get out the crackpipe - Lawrence Yun wants you to take a hit

When wil these guys quit? For the love of god, when will these guys quit?

US market 'sluggish' but upturn expected

NAR expects es should experience ‘a gradual upturn’ later in the year, the National Association of Realtors has forecast..

‘Overall housing levels are historically strong, but sales remain sluggish compared to the recent boom’, NAR senior economist Lawrence Yun explained. ‘Home sales will probably fluctuate in a narrow range in the short run, but gradually trend upward with improving activity by the end of the year. It’s important to keep in mind that all real estate is local, and many markets are expected to have higher sales and strengthening prices during the second half of this year’.