Jane Eurek of Belvidere is a Realtor with Dickerson & Nieman Realtors
in Belvidere. She attended the National Association of Realtors Convention in New Orleans. Former Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush spoke at a general assembly. Agents attended break-outs and educational seminars. Agents from around the country helped rebuild the city by volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, a local library and other causes.

What do you do?

For 20 years, I’ve facilitated the home buying and selling process.

What message did you get from the presidents?

They told stories from the past and shared jokes and camaraderie. It was very relaxed.

When home listings were scarce in the fast-paced Central Florida sales
market of 2003-05, real estate agents and agencies competed fiercely to
nab exclusive listings. Competition is still a factor in the resale
market’s current slowdown, but now it’s on the sales side, with record or
near-record numbers of listings but fewer total sales being made. In
either type of market, Realtors and agents who ’specialize’ in geographic
areas use every asset and scrap of local knowledge they can draw upon
to outdo the competition.
It’s far easier these days to keep abreast of properties for sale and
to show listings because of computer technology, as the Realtors’
Multiple Listing Service is now available through the Internet rather than in
book form and encompasses a wider territory. The Mid-Florida Regional
MLS, for example, which includes listings from various local Realtor
boards, now includes properties all the way from Tampa to Orlando and
Daytona Beach. That makes it easier for all agencies to work deals farther
afield.

Weak housing markets appear to encourage mortgage fraud. Typically,
fraud associated with home purchases requires multiple perpetrators, one
of whom is the ringleader. While a lender is always the victim, another
lender may be involved as a perpetrator. An appraiser, home seller and
home buyer are always involved, perhaps innocently, perhaps not.

Here is a great example provided by one of my readers. He had his house
listed for sale for six months with no takers at the list price of
$700K, reduced from over $800K, and finally took it off the market. Shortly
thereafter, he received a letter offering him $675K, contingent on his
getting an appraisal for $750K. (The letter-writer was the ringleader
in this case.) The homeowner did get an appraisal for $750K, perhaps
because of his high asking price earlier, and the tendency for appraisals
to lag the market.

NEW YORK CITY-The Midtown office market registered a strong December
and Downtown saw major leases in excess of 100,000 sf during the month,
leading Jones Lang LaSalle to predict an active 2007. And some of that
activity may come from companies looking to renew before their leases
expire over the next four years.
According to JLL’s New York Monthly Market Update for December, overall
asking rents for office space in Midtown notched a 24% increase in the
12 months, with rents for class A space seeing “an unprecedented” jump
of 34.6% year-over-year. “More significantly, the percentage increase
is considerably higher than it was at the height of the market in 2000
when rents advanced by 21%,” the report states.