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Housing Note

[Podcast] Masters In Business: Jonathan Miller on the Real Estate Industry

May 1, 2021 | 1:09 pm | Podcasts |

This is my fourth appearance with my friend Barry Ritholtz, a prolific columnist/blogger, radio show host/podcaster, and wealth management firm head on his Masters In Business show for Bloomberg Radio. He previously interviewed me in 2014, 2016 and 2020.

Barry also posted the interview on his essential Big Picture blog: MiB: Jonathan Miller, Appraiser Extraordinaire in addition to the Bloomberg Masters In Business landing page.

To say we talk a lot about housing and valuation in a crazy market wouldn’t do this fun conversation any justice. I am always thrilled to be in the company of his never-ending incredible lineup of guests.

To listen to the entire one hour and 49 minute show (sorry about that), you can go here:


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With All That PPP And Without All That Travel, The Appraisal Foundation Doesn’t Need A Grant From ASC This Year

August 19, 2020 | 1:36 pm | Investigative |

This post previously appeared in the August 14, 2020 edition of Housing Notes. I’ve been writing these weekly summaries on housing topics for more than five years. To subscribe for free, you can sign up here. Then you can look forward to each issue every Friday at 2pm New York Time.

The TAF decline in credibility keeps on coming…

After the recent letter debacle where the Appraisal Foundation (TAF) opined falsely that Title XI did not permit the Appraisal Subcommittee (ASC) to provide oversight on TAF, we now have a letter from TAF essentially saying they are making so much money that they don’t need a grant this year from ASC. Who is writing all these letters? It can’t be Dave.

[click for full pdf]

In other words, because TAF saved so much money from not being able to fly around the country during the pandemic, they don’t need ASC Grant money this year. From this point, it’s only a hop skip and a jump to saying they don’t need the grant money so therefore they don’t need oversight. And grant money comes with “strings attached” – that the money used from a grant had to be accounted for to the ASC. And if TAF doesn’t need oversight this year, what is to stop them from raising USPAP related fees and stop collecting grant money forever? The conspiracy theorist in me is starting to worry about that aspect of this new more forceful tone out of TAF these days against any oversight.

No Grants = TAF + PPP

Why would the TAF turn down the annual grant process but still have the need to request PPP? What is the hardship they are declaring when they are saving hundreds of thousands in travel costs that are already questionable in their scale?

My appraisal firm in Manhattan applied for PPP because our business collapsed more than 90% almost immediately for two months. It enabled us to survive. I would think it would be obvious to TAF that their $626,000 annual travel expense would collapse. What other revenues would be sharply curtailed in the new online world?

That’s why Jeremy Bagott, MAI, AI-GRS, the Cosmic Cobra guy, issued this press release on July 6th:


* * * FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE * * *


WITH MILLIONS IN CASH AND STOCKS, APPRAISAL FOUNDATION HAULS IN CARES ACT RELIEF

(LOS ANGELES, July 6, 2020) – Over the years, the tiny, publicly funded Appraisal Foundation has built up a large reserve in cash and publicly traded equities. Its war chest grew from $3.6 million in 2010 to $6.5 million in 2018, the most recent year its IRS Form 990 is available. Its Cause IQ peer nonprofits had nothing like it in their reserves. Despite this burgeoning pot, it has continued to receive public grant money each year from state-licensed appraisers via the mandatory National Registry Fee. In early July 2020, it was learned that, despite wielding this hefty reserve and its guarantee of annual public grant money, the nonprofit also applied for and received CARES Act relief through the Small Business Administration of between $150,000 and $350,000. This is money that could otherwise have gone to struggling mom-and-pop appraisers hurt by the pandemic.

From 2010 to 2018, the nation’s licensed appraisers paid the 14-employee organization more than $6 million through the mandatory National Registry Fee. The group then parlayed that subsidy into more than $27.6 million in publishing revenue extracted from the same captive appraisers during that time. It has copyrighted the publicly subsidized materials and granted exclusive online course rights.

In 2017, the foundation paid its top officer more than $760,000 in an internal retirement-plus-salary deal that effectively doubled his pay from the previous year. For 2018, trustees paid him $414,000 – less than the previous year’s haul but still more than twice the salary of the chairman of the Federal Reserve, who oversees 20,000 employees and the nation’s central bank.

These issues would be no one’s business were this organization not receiving guaranteed annual public grants, tax-exempt status and allowed to wield a government-authorized publishing franchise and contracts with the U.S. Department of the Interior and Department of Justice – and it is now receiving PPP money. A congressionally authorized federal contractor with guaranteed public grants is not what lawmakers had in mind when they passed the CARES Act, which includes the PPP program.

During this pandemic, expect to see licensed appraisers further weakened with fewer options and higher license upkeep costs. Expect the nonprofit to further leverage its copyrights – the development of which appraisers pay for. It is now receiving CARES Act relief. It has never let a good crisis go to waste.

If you’re frustrated, here’s something you can do right away:

Email Mark Abbott, Grants Director at the Appraisal Subcommittee, at Mark@asc.gov and James Park, its Executive Director, at Jim@asc.gov and tell them you want the Appraisal Foundation’s next grant to be reduced by whatever public funding the foundation has received from the CARES Act during the pandemic and its reserves of cash and publicly traded securities, which totaled $6.5 million as of its most recent IRS Form 990. The $40 National Registry Fee paid by appraisers each year ($80 at biennial license renewal) needs to be rolled back by a commensurate amount to provide relief to appraisers. The waste and abuse going on at this tiny nonprofit is being underwritten by the public and it needs to stop. Please cc Arthur Lindo at the Federal Reserve at arthur.lindo@frb.gov.


    • *

About “Dispatches from the Cosmic Cobra Breeding Farm”: The culmination of two years of research, a new book illuminates over-the-top spending and questionable dealings at the familiar Beltway nonprofit. Published just before the pandemic, it chronicles international jet-setting by officers and trustees, conflicts of interest, lobbyist tie-ins, outsized cash reserves and swollen pay at the tiny nonprofit. The book is available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle versions. You can read more about it on the book’s Amazon page.

The Appraisal Foundation’s IRS Form 990 may be viewed online at Propublica’s Nonprofit Explorer. To find it, Google “Propublica Nonprofit Explorer” and type “Appraisal Foundation” into the search box and follow the links.


# #


Here is another email from appraiser Jeremy Bagott (The Cosmic Cobra guy). Bold my emphasis.


Dear Colleague,

Thanks to the Small Business Administration’s data release on July 6, a few news outlets are working doggedly to expose organizations that, with dubious need, have applied for and received federal PPP relief. Ryan Tracy of the Wall Street Journal recently wrote about double-dipping by state highway contractors in Florida who applied for and received PPP relief despite holding government contracts unaffected by Covid. You can read the story here (but you’ll have to get past the Journal’s paywall).

A rogues’ gallery of organizations that have applied for PPP relief include Harvard University (with its $39 billion endowment), the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (with its reported $3.7 billion valuation) and, yes, the congressionally authorized Appraisal Foundation. The former two were shamed into giving the money back once the matter was made public.

Unlike Harvard and the L.A. Lakers, survival of the Appraisal Foundation and its paid panels is literally guaranteed in a federal statute. The statute mandates its guaranteed annual government grants. The making of the grants is part of the Appraisal Subcommittee’s charter. According to its IRS Form 990 for 2018, the most recent available, the Appraisal Foundation spent $626,000 on travel that year. (If past years are any measure, some of it was on international junkets for top officers and favored trustees.) It no longer has that travel expenditure due to the pandemic. The foundation also had $6.5 million in cash and publicly traded equities, according to its 2018 tax form. Why did it apply for between $150,000 and $350,000 in PPP relief?

If you now google “Appraisal Foundation” and “PPP,” the top hit is a CNN Politics site that identifies the Appraisal Foundation as a nonprofit that has applied for and received PPP funding. You can see it here. The Wall Street Journal and CNN are doing God’s work in this respect.

If you’re frustrated, here’s something you can do right away:

Email Mark Abbott, Grants Director at the Appraisal Subcommittee, at Mark@asc.gov and James Park, its Executive Director, at Jim@asc.gov and tell them you want the Appraisal Foundation’s next grant to be reduced by whatever public funding the foundation has received from the CARES Act during the pandemic and its reserves of cash and publicly traded securities. The $40 National Registry Fee paid by appraisers each year ($80 at biennial license renewal) needs to be rolled back by a commensurate amount to provide relief to appraisers during the pandemic. The waste and abuse going on at this nonprofit is being underwritten by appraisers (who are also voters and taxpayers). It needs to stop. Please cc Arthur Lindo at the Federal Reserve at arthur.lindo@frb.gov.

Best regards,



Jeremy Bagott, MAI, AI-GRS
jbagott@gmail.com


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The ‘Urban To Suburban’ Narrative Is Really ‘Manhattan To Suburban’

August 19, 2020 | 1:26 pm | | Charts |

This post previously appeared in the August 14, 2020 edition of Housing Notes. I’ve been writing these weekly summaries on housing topics for more than five years. To subscribe for free, you can sign up here. Then you can look forward to each issue every Friday at 2pm New York Time.

The New York Times created a terrific graphic on our Elliman New Signed Contract Report by illustrating the performance of Manhattan and Brooklyn versus Westchester County. Brooklyn’s sales market performance is closer to Westchester than it is to its city counterpart.


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Median sales price can be subject to skew by consumer behavior more than math

May 12, 2020 | 11:19 am | Explainer |

Here’s an updated excerpt from my Housing Note newsletter dated October 28, 2016, digging into the median sales price. You can subscribe to Housing Notes and other housing resources for free.


I wrote about the median sales price a decade ago, and the message still holds. A couple of years ago, I whipped up a table that shows how median sales price can perform in a changing housing market. The median sales price is the default price trend indicator of real estate because it eliminates the extreme highs and lows of a data and merely represents the middle number. However, it is also subject to skew by consumer behavior that can overpower the math. So I always provide two to three price trend indicators depending on the quality of available information (average sales price, median sales price, median sales price) for all of the reports in my Elliman Report Series. The relationship between median and average sales price can also tell a story.

Click on the graphic below to expand.

medianexplained

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Establishing the COVID-19 Demarcation Line: From ‘Hanks To Banks’

April 28, 2020 | 5:26 pm | Milestones |

This topic was explored in last Friday’s Housing Notes.

In order to understand what is happening now, we need to ween ourselves off of what happened before this crisis and focus on finding data exclusive to the post-COVID-19 era. In Manhattan, that data set is not yet apparent because we are in nearly a total market shut down but it is evident elsewhere to a limited degree. From my perspective, the demarcation line for the onset of the crisis is where market participants would have to be living in a cave on a desert island to be unaware of the sharp pivot in market sentiment.

March 15, 2020

I believe that date is March 15th which is the date of the Federal Reserve federal funds rate cut to zero and was their second cut in less than two weeks.

March 11, 2020

My friend and California appraiser Ryan Lundquist proclaimed March 11th which was the date Tom Hanks announced he and his wife had contracted COVID-19. Phil Crawford of Voice of Appraisal said the demarcation line was March 5, 2020 dubbing it “data point zero” and I had originally said the demarcation line was March 3, 2020, on the day of the 0.5% rate cut in March.

I was talking about this difference in these dates with a friend, Chicagoan, and RAC appraiser Michael Hobbs who brilliantly dubbed this four-day window from March 11 to March 15 as: “From Hanks To Banks.”

And if you do the math, the median and average date of March 11 and March 15 is literally Friday the 13th so what more confirmation of a demarcation line do you need?

Whatever your specific local demarcation line is, use it to keep the data for these two market periods separate.

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More Bloomberg Media Hits On Real Estate and the Coronavirus

April 5, 2020 | 2:29 pm | | Podcasts |

If you missed this week’s Housing Notes, here are two Bloomberg clips (from radio and TV) where I break down the state of the market post-Coronavirus:


Bloomberg Radio: Surveillance – ‘Jonathan Miller…details how the housing market is dealing with fallout from the coronavirus.’

I spoke with Tom Keene and Lisa Abramowicz on Bloomberg Radio’s morning show “Surveillance” on the state of the housing market.

The full segment is a great listen. My interview starts at 21:33.


[click image to play]


Bloomberg TV: Markets – ‘Manhattan Home Sellers Hold Back Listings During Coronavirus’

I joined network Vonnie Quinn in New York to talk about the state of the market since the coronavirus hit. She is always wonderful to speak with. The stock photo they used for me was taken about 15 years ago (when I was 15, obviously). At the last second, they had me speak through their London bureau for technical reasons, so each question and answer saw a small delay. The interview was based on this Bloomberg article: Manhattan Home Sellers Hold Back Listings in Coronavirus Retreat:


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2Q 2015 Manhattan Sales Market Breaks A “Record Number of Records”

July 5, 2015 | 9:38 pm | Reports |

Manhattan_2Q15

Last Thursday, the 2Q 2015 Manhattan Sales Report we prepared for Douglas Elliman (part of the Elliman Report series I’ve been writing for 21 years) was published.

I spoke at length about the report in last Friday’s Housing Note: What Greek Debt Crisis? Manhattan Set A Record Number of Housing Records.

You might considering signing up for it. I clear my mind of all the housing clutter accumulated during the week into a thought piece that tries to make sense of what is going on. It’s got plenty of humor and sarcasm, but most importantly, it has plenty of understandable insights, data and charts.

housingnotes_logo

Sign up here as thousands of others have. It’s free and best of all, you’ll make me happy. Even better, if you like it, share it with others.

But I digress…

There were lots of Manhattan records set in 2Q 2015. Here’s a partial list I created for last Friday’s Housing Note: What Greek Debt Crisis? Manhattan Set A Record Number of Housing Records.

Co-op/Condo
Highest Average Sales Price
Highest Average Sales Price – New Development
Highest Average PPSF – New Development
Highest Median Sales Price – New Development
Highest Average Sales Price – Resales
Largest Average Square Feet – New Development
Highest 2-Bedroom Median Sales Price
Highest Median Sales Price 5th Quintile
Highest Median Sales Price 2nd Quintile
Highest Median Sales Price 1st Quintile

Co-op
Highest Average Sales Price
Highest Median Sales Price
Highest Median Sales Price – Resales
Highest Average PPSF – Downtown
Highest Median Sales Price – 2-Bedroom
Highest Average Sales Price – 2-Bedroom
Highest Average PPSF – 4+ Bedroom
Highest Median Sales Price 5th Quintile
Highest Median Sales Price 4th Quintile
Highest Median Sales Price 3rd Quintile
Highest Median Sales Price 2nd Quintile

Condo
Highest Average Sales Price
Highest Average Sales Price – New Development
Highest Average Sales Price – Resales
Highest Average PPSF – Resales
Highest Median Sales Price – Resales
Highest Median Sales Price – Studio
Highest Median Sales Price 5th Quintile
Highest Median Sales Price 4th Quintile
Highest Median Sales Price 1st Quintile

Loft (Co-op+Condo)
Highest Average PPSF
Highest Average Sales Price – Resales
Highest Average PPSF – Resales

Luxury (Co-op+Condo) – Top 10%
Highest Average Sales Price
Highest Average Sales Price – New Development
Highest Median Sales Price – Co-op
Highest Median Sales Price – Condo
Highest Median Sales Price – Resale

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