10 Best Real Estate Developments of the 00’s

This is a really good read! Brian Summerfield, Online Editor, Realtor Magazine, posted this article on December 23, 2009. #1 according to Brian is the Boom and Bust of the U.S. Housing Market, #2 is the Fall of Fannie and Freddie, #3 is the Government-Led Recovery, #4 is The Practitioner Explosion, i.e., the Realtor gold rush of the 2,000’s. But wait, there is more. You will not want to miss reading about the #5 is the Commercial Crash, #6 is the HVCC, #7 is the Record Lows in Mortgage Rates, #8 is the RE.net, #9 is Real Estate on TV, and last, but not least - #10 Going Green!

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

#1: Housing Goes Boom and Bust

I have to be honest: I feel like this entry is kind of cheating. It just seems too broad to offer up as a single development. Why not talk about something more specific, like the subprime crisis? Surely that’s emblematic of the larger issue, isn’t it?

But, really, the boom and bust in housing wasn’t just the real estate story of the decade, it was the economic story of the decade. And even that’s not really doing it justice. To put it another way, it would be impossible to write the Great American Novel about this time period without including the tumultuous real estate market in some way. For that reason, I feel like there’s no getting around putting it at the top of this list.

I’m not going to go through all of the events that produced the explosion in housing values and the ensuing drop, partly because I’ve already touched on some of them in previous #Top10inRE blogs, and it’s simply too much to cover in a single post.

But I would like to discuss, briefly, what we’ll take from all this into the next decade and beyond. There are some obvious lessons, such as scaling back on exotic mortgages and easy credit. Then there are some that are more problematic.

The one I find most troubling is how we’ve perceived homes as an asset. In the housing mania that lasted roughly from 2001 to 2006, consumers came to view their homes as a very safe, sustainable investment that would yield high returns for everyone in a short amount of time. The fact that there has never been such an investment in the history of investing did not seem to deter them in the least.

But after the housing bubble burst, the pendulum swung too far in the other direction. The conventional wisdom came to be that houses were no longer investments, but rather mere shelter. This isn’t quite right, either. While home ownership does provide a roof over one’s head, so does renting. And there’s a reason why, even now, the majority of people in this country prefer the former.

Real estate is a store of wealth, one that does appreciate in value. But it’s not the kind of investment that’s going to provide 50 percent or greater returns in just a couple of years for an indefinite period of time. The sooner everyone—practitioners, lenders, buyers, sellers—realizes this, the sooner we’ll be on the road to a long-term, tenable recovery in real estate.

Well, that’s my list for this decade. Let me know if you think I left anything out!”

I hope you enjoy this information. Want to discuss theories? Please stop by my office. The coffee is always on… Look for the second top real estate development of the 00’s to come next week!

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