Meeting the Market Challenge in 2010

Don't let the movie theater interior picture fool you. We werent off playing hooky seeing "Shutter Island" at our local Daly City multiplex but rather we found ourselves checking out the Wells Fargo sponsored event. The event featured mostly video feed interviews about the current state of the real estate market and how Wells Fargo seeks to improve that.

The speakers ranged from Jeremy Conaway (RECON Intelligence Service), to Mary Coffin and Brad Blackwell (Wells Fargo Executive VPs) to a 45 minutes mini motivational pitch by Brian Buffini. Except for Conoway, everyone had something relevent of insightful about the short sale/loan mod crisis, the housing outlook and what will happen in the near future.

When pressed into the question of "shadow inventory" Coffin mentioned something that none of the major press has pick upped on. She says that the shadow inventory is right in front of our eyes in the form of current homeowners in default or trying for loan mods. Some of these people won't qualify and will become either short sales or to some extent REOs. There's your shadow inventory.

Buffini excited the crowd with his usual high energy. He said that the coming months should be an exciting time for real estate agents for a few reasons. A few observations include:

1) 47% of homebuyers this year will be first-time homebuyers.

2) There will be a housing shortage in the next 18 months. (Mostly due to the fact that few new developments got funding the past few years)

3) There are 80 million echo-boomers who will become prospective homebuyers in the near future.

Sure, the event included a lot of PR spin from Wells Fargo and NAR reps but for the most part people left the event charged and ready to go go go. Thanks Brian!