Robert Shiller Coming to SPU

Yale Economist Robert Shiller of the Case Shiller Home Price Index will be speaking at Seattle Pacific University on Monday, April 27, 2009 at 1:00 PM.  Details are on the SPU website; hat tip Tim Ellis.  I missed Paul Krugman when he came to the UW a few months ago and I’ll miss this one, too.  But Tim said he’d take notes for us and post them on Seattle Bubble. Thanks Tim.  BTW, the latest Case Shiller reports are out and the analysis on the Seattle market can be found here which shows the Seattle area off 20% from our peak.

I Have a Crush on Paul Krugman

I have a crush on Dr. Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics at Princeton.  He recently received the Nobel Prize in Economics for his new theory on trade patterns and location of economic activity. Dr. Krugman is also an author and editor of about 20 books.  My new copy of The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 just arrived. Sigh.  I’m not the only reading his blog in the New York Times telling us what to do to avoid the next Depression. Now the media has caught up with Dr. Krugman and I can watch countless videos on youtube. Yes, yes, I know he’s married. That’s what makes it such a safe crush: Because it will never happen. It’s like having a crush on Bono or CR

I wait patiently each day to read such lines as “What we’re looking at now are the consequences of a world gone Madoff.

ING Bank suing under RICO statutes to recover losses by alleged local real estate fraud ring.

Here is the article from the Seattle Times.

Excerpt:

In one deal, the bank loaned a borrower $935,000 to buy a Tacoma house for $1.35 million — a house that, according to the real-estate Web site Zillow, is valued higher than 99 percent of homes in its ZIP code. Nationwide Home Lending was paid nearly $30,000 in fees on that loan.

I’ve just dropped an entire commentary I wrote within this post regarding the fantasy idea some people believe that our local area is somewhat insulated from the garbage and degenerates destroying our markets and economy due to greed and fraud.

In essence, my post can be wrapped up in these questions:

  1. Ethically, is this industry too far gone to recover any resemblance of credibility, trust and moral foundation?
  2. How will the real estate brokers weed out the bad actors? We know DFI is going after loan officers and others.

Fortunately, I know and work with quite a few agents and loan officers who genuinely try to do their very best for their customers. Unfortunately, many of them and others who work in real estate are caught in the enormous wake of the problems the fraudsters have created.

RCG's Ardell and Rhonda Win Three of the Magnificent Seven Awards for 2008

Larry Cragun compiles a long list of consumer centric blog articles throughout the year and just released his 2008 picks for the Magnificent Seven Awards.  RCG’s Rhonda Porter and Ardell DellaLoggia made it to the top.  Here are the winning RCG entries:

Flat Screen TV: Is it Attached?
by Ardell DellaLoggia
“At what point does a wall mounted TV that is hard wired into the wall without outlets become “an installed electrical fixture

Free Taco at Taco Bell

Taco Bell Steal a Base Free Taco
Taco Bell Steal a Base Free Taco

America wins a free taco today, Tuesday October 28th,  from 2 p.m to 6 p.m.

As part of the Steal a Base; Steal a Taco promotion, anyone can go into a Taco Bell today between 2 p.m and 6 p.m and walk out with a free crunchy, seasoned beef taco.
Jason Bartlett Stole a Base in the 1st Game of the 2008 World Series, winning everyone in America a free taco.  I didn’t read all of the fine print, but it sounds like anyone in line by 6 p.m. gets a free taco, so bring the family!

Photo Synth will change real estate

Remember how we were once blown away by the amount of information on the web? The number of facts, rumors, discussions, and, well, the shear number of words that were generated daily?

The textual web is fascinating, but it’s yesterday’s news. The innovation now is the visual web. It’s already begun with Google Street View – you can look out the window of a virtual car on nearly every street in a metropolitan area now. Next up? PhotoSynth. We saw previews of it two years ago, but (holy smokes!) it will be real in 24 hours.

Photosynth takes overlapping photos and constructs a pseudo 3D scene out of them. More images: better scene. An agent could take 400 photos in a house and instead of virtual tours (or annoying video tours), users could walk themselves through the house.

I can only imagine it will get more powerful. Add some more horsepower and they could create scenes from video. Add some more horsepower and they could let you travel through time in a square – through all of the previous users “synths.” You’ll be able to wander off of Google’s Street View and into someone’s yard and, if they’ve uploaded photos, into their home. Creepy, but cool.

I will be very excited to use it. Once they’re “cool enough” to support my operating system. What is this, 1999?

nope.

no, you aren't

Reporting from ConnectSF08

I’m here at the beautiful Palace Hotel in San Francisco for the Real Estate Connect conference put on by Inman News.  I’ve been to Connect conferences in the past and came away with some fond memories of presentations by Larry Page and John Seely Brown.  I’m sure my raincityguide blogger colleagues are here someplace; by this time of night I’ll guess they’re out drinking and I’ll hook up with them tomorrow.  There are two tracks to choose from tomorrow morning, blogging and foreclosures.  Guess which one I signed up for?  Tomorrow afternoon, Brad Inman delivers the opening keynote “How the Nomadic Culture Will Rock Your World” and right after that, we’ll here from Craig Newmark and RCG’s Dustin Luther and THEN finally, “The Housing Debate: Bull v. Bear” panel with two of my favorite bloggers, CR from CalculatedRisk and Yves Smith from Naked Capitalism.  It doesn’t look like all the meals are covered so if anyone who knows San Francisco has suggestions for where to step out for a quick bite, please let me know. I’m across the street from the Mongtomery Street BART station and I am armed with a four day BART pass.