Friday, April 06, 2007

David Lereah's New Book is Released

David Lereah has done it again. He has written yet another book titled 'All Real Estate is Local: Why Understanding the Housing Trends in Your Area Is Essential to Building Wealth.' The book was just released on April 3rd, 2007. It should have been released two days earlier.




From the Publisher:

Book Description

When real estate booms nationally, there are hundreds of cities and regions that lag behind. Similarly, when the market slows or flattens, countless states and neighborhoods begin to boom. As Lereah makes clear, the most important factor in buying or selling a home is the local market conditions. Lereah shows readers how to:

  • Evaluate the values of homes in one's own town or county
  • Determine whether property values in your targeted neighborhood are on the rise
  • Assess the market conditions in locations when buying a vacation or second home
  • Learn how to identify markets that are overvalued or fully valued, and those that promise to appreciate more quickly in the future
  • Understand the local economic developments that can affect oneƂ’s investment in the future

There are countless books offering advice on making money in real estate. This is the first one to explain why knowing the ins and outs of your local region is essential to deciding when, and where, to buy.

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Mr. Lereah tells half truths and manipulates facts and figures. He cannot be trusted as he is a paid shill. Don't buy his book. Figure out ways to mock his book!

19 comments:

  1. Why are you promoting this?

    Yeah, yeah, I know you say "Don't buy this book" at the bottom of your post, but you've put a huge picture of it up, the publisher's description, and essentially dedicated 95% of this space to hawking this filth.

    Better no post at all than this.

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  2. Well it is a local business.

    And I wonder how our friend David is doing with his FL condo? Seems that I saw an article today citing an 18 month (yes not a typo, 18) inventory figure in Tampa area. Ouch. That one's got to hurt a bit.

    Take a lesson from Cramer. You get more buy in from an audience when you are honest enough to admit when you made a mistake. Cramer tells us when he makes mistakes when picking a stock, so please David won't you come clean on your FL condo that was highlighted on these Web Blogs a few months ago.

    Admit that RE does not always go up, Admit you made mistakes and begin to give real advice.

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  3. I don't care about books and data statistics. I just want to know when will the $600,000 house I want to buy will be offered for $450,000. I'm tired of these high prices for crap. When will the prices of the late 90's come back?

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  4. CNBC: "Mr. Lereah, will you be using the proceeds from this book to repay the people that bought your last book?"

    DL: "huminahuminahumina...ahhhhh..."

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  5. There is an old saying,

    THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY

    Which is to say, if people are buying realestate everywhere, then its time to buy near you.

    The high prices you are tired of will be gone when the sellers of such houses in the local area you are looking for have to leave and must sell.

    Lets look at NOVA for example. The housing trends were a 25% increase per year for selling. So if you sold you made 25% per year. The seller made wealth because the local market dictated high prices. But now, houses in NOVA are not selling for what they were worth a few months ago. So to build your wealth in a local area you need to rebuy the house you sold to some smuck in 2005.

    BUT, if you did not sell a house in 2005, then you do not have that extra booty from said smuck so if the smuck wants to sell to you he must also discount said price to be affordable to anyone intrested in buying.

    BUT, prices have not dropped enough for most buyers yet, as evident from spring sales.

    ERGO, to get an influx of new buyers who did not sell in the LOCAL area, prices must drop back to rates that reflect the cost of builing materials and manpower for that local area.

    So if a realtor tells you that the new World Trade Center will make housing prices increase. You need to realize that its not coming until 2112 and it does not affect the local ecomomy until after its built.

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  6. Sorry, off topic but this is an excellent video. Careful though, it’s a bumpy ride and that last steps a doozie!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUldGc06S3U

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  7. Some people call him David Liarrhea.

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  8. David,

    Its good to point out these finds.

    But is real estate local anymore? Seriously. Once upon a time mortgages were local, not the market it national if not international. (I know people borrowing against multiple US properties to buy in Costa Rica.)

    Also look at US migration patterns. People think nothing about moving across the nation to pursue a better standard of living. Sixty percent of our hires come from out of state. Think about that a minute, that means half of our workforce has no lifetime loyalty to the region. Hence if their lifestyle isn't up to their standards, they will shift regions. The shear number of people who have told me they are moving to other regions this summer... is staggering.

    I know of grandparents retiring to go to their grandkids. Even whole multi-generational moves, en mass. Its being done just so that the youngest adults in the clan can buy afford ably. Several coworkers are kicking their adult children out of the region so that they no longer have to subsidize them.

    Companies are just starting to move workers to lower cost of living areas. We've seen it before... we're about to see it again. Why must be keep repeating this pattern?

    Got popcorn?
    Neil

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  9. Wasn't the argument for 'Real Estate never goes down' a national aggregate statistic? Suddenly Lereah discovers the importance of specificity, and locality?

    Yeah, keep listening to this guy for sure.

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  10. Like Al Gore inventing the internet, David Lereah thinks he is Columbus and has just discovered the three L's of real estate (location x 3).

    Notice that the picture on the front cover is a dead end street? How fitting, since buying at today's drastically overinflated bubble prices is a sure way to a dead end street of permanent and destructive debt serfdom.

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  11. Shameful!

    Will avoid using a realtor when I buy a house and will never buy this turd's book.
    I hope he is happy pumping real estate at the peak and getting young buyers in. Now many are facing a nightmare scenario cuz they bought a house they never could afford. Congrats Lereah. I hope you represented feel good about the job of representing your slick organization.

    You said Lereah house prices go up inflation +1 or 2 %. How do u explain prices going up 100% in last 5 years in a number of bubble markets.
    Based on your inflation + 1 or 2 % why do you NOT ever and your slick organization ever say prices are way overvalued versus this metric and for the avg family to afford and prices need to fall back to this inflation + 1 or 2% trendline?

    Why? Cuz prices need to fall a 1/3 to get it there.
    I guess u would have egg on your face? Right?

    RIGHT!

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  12. "I don't care about books and data statistics. I just want to know when will the $600,000 house I want to buy will be offered for $450,000. I'm tired of these high prices for crap. When will the prices of the late 90's come back?"

    This is a parody, right?

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  13. Anonymous said...

    "I don't care about books and data statistics. I just want to know when will the $600,000 house I want to buy will be offered for $450,000. I'm tired of these high prices for crap. When will the prices of the late 90's come back?"

    Those prices are never coming back. Current home prices are bound to drop 50 to 60% -- Condos will experience bigger declines. The coming decline will be the biggest in the history of real estate. We are talking depression here. This may take a year or a little more. Be patient and you will be rewarded. You may get the house you eying for 300k. I heard from a realtor friend of mine that some homes in bethesda were bought for few thousands -- the owners owed back dated property taxes. Be patient.

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  14. "I don't care about books and data statistics. I just want to know when will the $600,000 house I want to buy will be offered for $450,000. I'm tired of these high prices for crap. When will the prices of the late 90's come back?"

    You will not buy your house forever if you are waiting for $450K to buy $600K house. It is not going to happen for another 25% drop. The market has already dropped 10%-25% depending on the zip code and the inventory level has stabilized since last Dec. It seems the market has bottomed in 2006 summer and remained flat since then.

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  15. The hostility towards the author appears to be based on something other than the new book. The book has only just been released. That and the fact that real estate is very much about the local market, the local schools, the local employment levels, the crime in the area and other factors.

    There is no national real estate market. Never has been. People care more about the commute to work than they do about the prices in another state.

    Maybe the author has made mistakes in the past. I do not know anything about that. I do know the premise of the new book is spot on. I have been investing in real estate for a long time and have observed how local conditions drive values. This past boom largely missed much of the Midwest and parts of NY state. The present crash has prices rising in a number of communities.

    John Corey
Real estate investor, 20+ years - multiple states and countries
http://johncorey.wordpress.com/ - advice for real estate investors

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  16. Buy his book?

    Why, is there a shortage of toilet paper?

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  17. How quickly we forget about Lereah's prior book from 2005:

    “Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom? Why Home Values and Other Real Estate Investments Will Climb Through The End of The Decade - And How to Profit From Them."

    FWIW, the publishers recently retitled Lereah's book to avoid inducing cognitive dissonance in potential buyers at Barnes and Noble, as well as laughing fits on the floor! The book has now been re-titled:

    “Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust - And How You Can Profit from It: How to Build Wealth in Today’s Expanding Real Estate Market”

    Isn't it amazing that the former title became so completely wrong, so completely off-track, that the title had to be changed within only 1-2 years? Note how the guarantees of performance and timing (“investments WILL CLIMB through the end of the decade”) have been replaced with vague prophecies of how the boom won't go bust (and what exactly constitutes a bust, per Leheah?).

    Only today, we now have this coming from Lereah's mouth:

    http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070411/NEWS/704110354/-1/BREAKING

    But before that happens, Central Florida has to emerge from the current real estate slump, which most likely won't end until 2008, said Lereah, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors.

    "It's not good right now," he said. And it hasn't been good for the past 18 months.

    "In August 2005 we peaked," Lereah said. "That was the end of the boom. We just went down from there. And speculators got caught with their financial pants down."

    Last year, Florida's residential real estate went into a recession. Now the market is beginning to bottom out.

    "Prices got too high," Lereah said of the 2005 market. "They shouldn't have gotten that high in the first place."

    And it has taken sellers nearly a year to realize the market isn't in their favor, he said. "But we are headed in the right direction.

    "(The outlook) is very positive for the future," he said. "It is all about the local economy. The fundamentals for a good market are still here."


    Talk about MAJOR league back-pedalling, needing to eat a HUGE plate of humble pie, as if no one would remember his prior predictions!? Why are these statements not in the headlines of the NAR? Oh, yeah: not good for sales, I guess.... For according to the NAR, now is ALWAYS a good time to buy and sell!

    For if it isn't clear that Lereah's and NAR's cheerleading MIGHT have played more than a teensie-weensie role in helping "home prices get that high" in the first place, then why is he saying that prices shouldn't have gotten that high? He must REALLY be scared of a market collapse, as it's not like he's Bernanke or Greenspan...

    Davie, dude, you should be quite proud: you accomplished exactly what you and the NAR and Mortgage Brokers Association set out to do: make LOTS of commissions for your rank and file members. What better way to inflate 6% commissions than to encourage prices to be driven sky-high? Remember: that 3 bd/2 ba house earns twice the commission when it's sold for $500k vs $200k. That's a no-brainer. So you and yours just did it.

    So good job, you succeeded in running up the market for personal gain, even though you so spoiled the market with the use of toxic mortgages that it'll remain toxic for decades.

    Like all idiots in business, he's focused only on the short-term gain, the get-rich-quick scheme, and thus killed the goose that laid the golden egg (as well as our economy)...

    David "Ponzi" Lereah, with the pain and wreckage left in the aftermath for others to clean up.

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  18. "all real estate is local." really? thank you for the wise words! because until this book came out, i thought when i buy a house, i'm actually buying it all over the world. i'm glad he corrected me! what's next? "people live in houses"?

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  19. david! you better take down this blog. you are not providing any useful data!!

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