The meme has hit the real estate world, courtesy of Brian Copeland and Maura Neill the folks at RETSO.

See home many real estate memes you can find…

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Are you ready for a real estate investment conference that is not on big sell and spam fest? Are you tired of every speaker from the stage pitching their product instead of teaching you?

Well, your conference has arrived. Josh Dorkin and the crew over at BiggerPockets is putting on a truly amazing conference on real estate investing with the focus on giving you the tools and techniques to create a firm foundation for your business.

It really is that simple…

What you will not get is the hype of 20  products that will create miracles in your business and cure cancer at the same time.

What you will get is some of the finest minds in the real estate investment community giving you solid advice, pertinent information, and the tools for you to succeed with your long term strategies.

Now, I do not want to pressure you, but I messed up. I told Josh, who is a friend and mentor, that I would put this post up weeks ago. But, as you know life gets in the way.

However, in the mean time space is filling up and I would hate for you to miss this conference. Josh told me he is keeping the conference small so that everyone who attends can get the most value out of it.

I remember the first RETechSouth conference that was like this one. I made more connections that helped my business in 1 day than I had the first 3 years I was blogging. Flagship conferences like this one from BiggerPockets will reap benefits for years if you take the initiative to attend.

The price is reasonable, the location is in Denver, Colorado (home of inexpensive flights and lots of fun), and the date is a little over a month away (March 23rd–24^th).

So click on the link below to learn more and sign up for the conference. 

BiggerPockets Real Estate Investing Summit and Expo

Tom 

P.S.  Look for me on the floor, I am pulling strings to get out of every coaching assignment and obligation to get out there. It is so good that, even though I do not invest in real estate myself, I know I will learn a great deal and increase my knowledge of the real estate industry.

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The new home sales data was released and the results are less than stellar. For 2011, there were only 302,000 new home sold nationwide. For perspective, in the South the numbers were the lowest since 1966, and that is the good news. In both the Northeast and the West, sales were the worst in recorded history.

So when you are talking with builders, be kind. They have had a very rough few years.

Purchases of single-family properties decreased 2.2 percent to a 307,000 annual pace, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists called for a rate of 321,000 home sales. Last year marked the worst year for the industry in records going back to 1963.

The threat of further price declines may be dissuading some Americans from buying a new home even with mortgage rates near all-time lows and more people finding work. Following a lull in 2011, a wave of foreclosures may hamper the recovery in real estate as more distressed properties are put on the market.

“Builders continue to contend with a number of existing homes that are deeply discounted,” said Anika Khan, an economist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina. “We’re expecting a bit of a pickup in 2012, but we won’t see a meaningful increase as long as new homes are competing with those existing homes.” via Bloomberg

New Home Sales Information From the Census Bureau

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Typically when you think of a battle between a house and a Prius, you add a dose of a drunk driver and a garage and you are done… But not today.

It looks like that super efficient windows are reflecting so much energy onto a car parked in Southern California that it is melting the plastic exterior parts of a lady’s Prius parked outside of the building.

A SoCal woman says the energy efficient window installed in a neighbor’s condominium is melting the plastic components on cars parked in her carport. Heather Patron of Studio City was dealing with a mystery regarding her Toyota Prius.

“The side view mirrors were melting,” says Patron. “Anything that was plastic on the car was melting.” Patron then observed a powerful beam of light that was reflecting off the window of a next door condominium, casting a concentrated beam over her carport.

CBS2’s Randy Paige placed a thermometer in the pathway of the beam on a partially cloudy day. The temperature registered over 120 degrees in less than five minutes.

“I’m positive that this window is what is causing the damage to my car,” says Patron.

Patron is not alone. Reports across the country have alleged damages brought on by concentrated sunlight reflected off of energy efficient windows. The National Association of Home Builders is now conducting a study on the matter. via CBS LA

There is no regulations against these types of windows but it will be interesting. And it makes me wonder if we are going to see melting Prius’s around the country in the coming years.

Progress…

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When buying a home, one of the key components is the down payment. Back a few years ago when the housing bubble was hitting it’s peak, there were no money down loans floated out there, but those are ancient history. Now you need hard money to make the loan.

Lending Tree commissioned a study and measured the states on what the average down payment for a home was in each state. From the low 3.5% down FHA and VA loans to the private loans that are looking for 15% to 20% or higher, the range for all the states in the country range from the high in New Jersey of 13.71% down to the low of West Virginia at 11.86%.

To be honest, I was a bit surprised the difference between the states is so little. This tells me that lending standards are tightening up, borrowers are having enough skin in the game to protect the banks from losing too much in foreclosure, and that the lending environment is becoming healthier.

This is all good news for the real estate industry.

Top 10 States With Highest Down Payment

New Jersey –  13.71%

Washington D.C. –  13.50%

New York –  13.47%

Hawaii –  13.33%

California –  13.22%

Florida –  13.16%

Alaska –  13.06%

Connecticut –  13.03%

Nevada –  12.98%

Massachusetts –  12.98%

See all 50 States here at Lending Tree

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As real estate professionals, your goal is a healthy and vibrant real estate marketplace. Lots of selling and buying of homes is a good thing, as is a healthy credit report and sufficient cash on hand by your buyers and large amounts of home equity with your sellers.

But if the last few years has taught us anything, that is not always the case. Heck, in some markets, that rarely is the case.

So being a real estate professional you also end up answering many questions about people having their homes underwater at this year’s Christmas Parties. 

Economic editor Megan McArdle writing in the Atlantic has a very thought provoking post out today discussing “When Should You Default on Your Mortgage?” Here is an excerpt but you should also go read the whole article. It is an issue that is on the table for many of the people in your marketplace and may help you as a trusted real estate professional giving solid and powerful advice.

As you can see, I think that people who are in financial trouble and cannot make their mortgage payment have a perfect right to walk away–and to do so as early as possible if there is no reasonable likelihood that their circumstances will change.  On the other hand, I think that if modest lifestyle changes like less steak and more hamburger, less cable and more library books, can make your mortgage payment affordable, I think you have an obligation to make those changes.  And if those changes aren’t even necessary–if the default is purely and simply because you would like the bank to eat the lost equity rather than you–I don’t think that’s right.

But for all the discussion of those people, I’m not sure how many of them there are.  Some, undoubtedly–in a country as big as the US, there is always some jerk doing almost anything you can imagine.  But given what we know about bankruptcy, I tend to think that the overwhelming majority of people walking away from their houses are doing so because they cannot support both the home, and a basic decent life for their families.  Obviously, I also tend to think that’s how it should be.

Read the whole article at “the Atlantic”.

And if you have any suggestions from the trenches on Megan’s advice, leave them in the comment section. Odds are there will also be people fighting through a rough mortgage right now reading this post and they will appreciate any and all help you can offer.

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According to CoreLogic the number of homes sold as reported by the National Association of Realtors could be off by 20% over the past 5 years.

Heads should roll, but they probably will not over this.

The National Association of Realtors said a benchmarking exercise had revealed that some properties were listed more than once, and in some instances, new home sales were also captured.

“All the sales and inventory data that have been reported since January 2007 are being downwardly revised. Sales were weaker than people thought,” NAR spokesman Walter Malony told Reuters.

“We’re capturing some new home data that should have been filtered out and we also discovered that some properties were being listed in more than one list.” via Reuters

My biggest problem with this is that it is the fox watching the hen house. You have an advocacy group reporting declining numbers that affects their dues paying members. It was in the best interest of the NAR to be “off” a little bit each month to make the numbers look better.

Just as the Labor Department reports the unemployment numbers each week and then quietly revises them upwards after the news cycle is over, so it seems that the NAR is doing the same with the housing numbers.

And what a surprise, they are reporting this during the Christmas lull so it can be old news when the selling season starts.

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Might as well go visit your good buddy Christopher Dodd in Ireland.

Original here.

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 Questions arise over the bonuses being paid to Freddie and Fannie Executives.

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A rather lengthy but very interesting infographic from Coldwell Banker on how Baby Boomers are looking at real estate as they hit their golden years. What caught my eye is how the younger baby boomers look at real estate differently than the older part of the generation…

See a larger version here at the Coldwell Banker site.

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