PART II OF II

(Listen to Part 1)

I’ve been on a 6 month hiatus from podcasting after 150+ interviews over the previous 2 years – had a bunch of other things going and I needed to take a little break.  I’ve been itching to return and was talking to my friend Barry the other day and he wanted to do another one (his 3rd) and here it is.

It’s “R”-rated (for Ritholtz) so wear your earphones if around sensitive-types as he covers the state of housing, a possible recession and his exciting conference next Tuesday.

This podcast was too big so I cut it into 2 parts.  The first part was presented yesterday.

Enjoy!

PART I OF II

I’ve been on a 6 month hiatus from podcasting after 150+ interviews over the previous 2 years – had a bunch of other things going and I needed to take a little break.  I’ve been itching to return and was talking to my friend Barry the other day and he wanted to do another one (his 3rd) and here it is.

It’s “R”-rated (for Ritholtz) so wear your earphones if around sensitive-types as he covers the state of housing, a possible recession and his exciting conference next Tuesday.

This podcast was too big so I cut it into 2 parts.  The next will be up tomorrow.

Enjoy!

This podcast is an overview of the RBI Pending Home Sales Index – February 2011 covering the Washington, DC Metro area just released for RealEstate Business Intelligence (RBI), the data, research and analytics arm of MRIS.

This podcast is an overview of the RBI Pending Home Sales Index – February 2011 covering the Baltimore Metro market just released for RealEstate Business Intelligence (RBI), the data, research and analytics arm of MRIS.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Guy Kawasaki, former Chief (Software) Evangelist at Apple Computer in the early days of Macintosh – who has become a prolific author in addition to being a technology entrepreneur.  While I claim to avoid the self-help book genre, I realize I’ve read nearly all of his books.  Guy released his 10th book today: Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions.  Here are some reviews.

His first book, The Macintosh Way, is now a free download and was always one of my faves – because it came out as we were building our company, Miller Samuel, entirely by using Macs.  He later ran ACIUS, developer of 4th Dimension, the database application we ran for about 15 years to manage our data.

This was a pure treat for me as I got to talk about the early days of Apple, reminisced about Guy’s one word email technique (I shared my 15 second voicemail rule), his other ventures such as Alltop.com and Garage.com, the state of marketing today and how to make yourself enchanting.

Fun!

Here’s a brief recap of the 2010 annual data just released by RealEstate Business Intelligence (RBI) covering the Washington, DC metro housing market.

Here’s a brief recap of the 2010 annual data just released by RealEstate Business Intelligence (RBI) covering the Baltimore metro housing market.

I was brought in by RealEstate Business Intelligence (RBI), the statistics and research arm of MRIS to further their effort to provide more transparency in their regional housing market.  One of the first things I did with their information, whose depth and quality is unlike anything else I have ever analyzed, is build a pending home sales index for the Washington, DC Metro and Baltimore Metro markets.

The biggest problem in understanding the state of housing today is the quality and timing of the information. This podcast is a review of my thoughts on the subject and why a pending home sale index tends to be better at providing the state of a housing market than price indices.

Hint: they lag the moment when buyer and seller agree on a price aka “meeting of the minds” by as much as 5 months, don’t consider the different seasons of the year and are often skewed by seasonal adjustments.

Although I released these reports a few weeks ago, here’s a belated summary of two reports I prepare for Prudential Douglas Elliman: 2001-2010 Manhattan Townhouse Report + 2001-2010 Manhattan Market Report.

This podcast is an overview of the RBI Pending Home Sales Index – January 2011 covering the Baltimore Metro market just released for RealEstate Business Intelligence (RBI), the data, research and analytics arm of MRIS.

This podcast is an overview of the RBI Pending Home Sales Index – January 2011 covering the Washington, DC Metro area just released for RealEstate Business Intelligence (RBI), the data, research and analytics arm of MRIS.

I provided a brief summary of the 4Q 2010 Hamptons North Fork Market Overview that my firm prepares for Prudential Douglas Elliman as well as The Douglas Elliman Report: 2001-2010 Hamptons North Fork Edition.

Here’s a brief recap of the 4Q 2010 Long Island Market Overview that my firm prepares for Prudential Douglas Elliman.

I sat down with my good friend Barry Ritholtz, CEO/Director of Equity Research of Fusion IQ, Author of Bailout Nation and the engine behind The Big Picture Blog.

Barry is the only person I know who is described as providing “trenchant economic commentary” -(Norris/NYT) in fact, I’ve never even used “trenchant” in a sentence before now.  Barry makes his 3rd visit to The Housing Helix podcast and he does not disappoint his fans for the depth of his insight.

This is an R-rated (“R” for “Ritholtz”) podcast – children, young adults, rating agencies and commercial bankers beware.

Here’s a brief recap of the 4Q 2010 Brooklyn Market Overview released today prepared for Prudential Douglas Elliman.

Here’s a brief recap of the 4Q 2010 Queens Market Overview that my firm prepares for Prudential Douglas Elliman.

Here’s a brief recap on the 4Q 2010 Manhattan Rental Market Overview we prepare for Prudential  Douglas Elliman.  For hard core data geeks we have additional raw data and charts to check out.

Here’s a quick and dirty recap of the Manhattan Market Overview released today that we prepare for Prudential Douglas Elliman.  Audio quality is so-so because I used my iphone mic and then tried to clean it up with filters.

You get the idea.

I sit down with my friend John Mehigan, an associate broker at Gumley Haft Kleier who, when he is not selling real estate, is in the cast of HGTV’s number one show Selling New York (new season on HGTV premieres at 9pm EST).  We talk about his perspective on the Irish economy/Mahattan housing market and what I dubbed the “Irish Carpenter Syndrome” a few years ago as the Celtic Tiger was at full strength.

When he’s not selling on “the island” he’s selling an island in his first episode on January 13th on HGTV at 9pm.  It promises to be fun (like the conversation on this podcast).

I got to interview my namesake, Jonathan Miller who is the longtime author of the seminal publication Emerging Trends in Real Estate, the Urban Land Institute’s (ULI) annual commercial real estate industry forecast and speaks extensively on suburban and urban issues.

Our real estate lives have intersected for years.  For example, I would get complimented for a presentation at the Waldorf Hotel (although he gave the speech) while he would get inquiries about the NYC co-op condo market (which I track).

He is the co-founder of Miller Ryan LLC, a firm that provides strategic marketing communications counsel to the financial services and real estate industries.  He also writes over at GlobeSt.com on his Trend Czar blog.

I have made it a point to attend Mark Zandi‘s economic forecast presentations over the years and had the opportunity to meet and speak with him at the Counselors of Real Estate meeting in Philadelphia a few months ago.  He graciously accepted my invitation to have a conversation with me (via Skype).  In 2009 Time magazine called him The Recession’s Hot Wonk.  He’s got a more optimistic outlook than consensus at the moment, but he describes his optimism in its proper context during our conversation.

Mark is also an author, including Financial Shock: Global Panic and Government Bailouts–How We Got Here and What Must Be Done to Fix It and his new book Paying the Price: The New Economic Mess We Have Created and How to Get Out of It.

I get to have another conversation with Rick Sharga of RealtyTrac – this time via skype.  I’ve long admired his ability to articulate the state of the US foreclosure market.  We touch on foreclosure mapping, robo-signing, and a sense of where we seem to be headed foreclosure-wise.

For years I’ve watched Gary Shilling‘s media interviews on the economy and read his columns in Forbes.  I ran into him recently when we were both on Bloomberg Surveillance with Tom Keene and Ken Prewitt and invited him to sit down with me and have a conversation about housing.  He runs his epomonyous economic consulting firm and published a widely read newsletter called INSIGHTS.

Gary’s latest book was just released called “The Age of Deleveraging” which resides on my iPad (via Kindle app). We have an engaging discussion even though we don’t touch on his other passion, bee keeping.

In a first for this podcast series, I have included a press call on a new product release.  While I participate in media calls fairly regularly for my Matrix blog, I have never recorded one.

I spoke with Steve Berkowitz, CEO of Move, Inc., a publicly traded company, that counts Realtor.com and Move.com as two of their assets, on the launch of MortgageMatch.com today.  It’s a new web site designed to help home buyers and those looking to refinance, find and prequalify for a mortgage in as little as 10 minutes.  Sue Stewart, SVP who is overseeing MortgageMatch.com, provided the details of the services the site provides.

I’ve often said that the terms of the transaction (including financing) are as critical as pricing in today’s tight credit environment.  They say they are focused on improving transparency in the real estate transaction and are also helping consumers and realtors to be more efficient by better defining expectations.

Press Release [pdf]