I’m a regular listener to the Slate Money podcast so I was thrilled to be invited to participate.
This week, Felix Salmon, Emily Peck, and Elizabeth Spiers are joined by housing market analyst and real estate appraiser Jonathan Miller to answer all their burning real estate questions including what’s going on with mortgage rates, how do new luxury buildings affect prices, and why is rent so damn high?
Tags: Felix Salmon, Emily Peck, Elizabeth Spiers, Slate+, Slate Money
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TV, Videos
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Last Friday I had a fun discussion with Lisa Abramowicz on Bloomberg Surveillance. It’s been bedlam in Appraiserville so I’ve been slow to post it. The New York to Florida housing migration story has been a bit one sided with optics that suggest 9 people will be left in Manhattan by the summer time despite that Manhattan contract activity beginning to surge. On the other hand Florida sales activity continues to be frenzied.
I don’t have the short clip so you have to go to the end of the full show at the 2:10:50 minute mark to pick up my interview with Lisa (but I think its worth it):
Tags: Bloomberg Surveillance, Lisa Abramowicz, Migration, Inbound Migration, Outbound Migration
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Events
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I’ve been asked to participate in Thursday’s New York Times Event New York Real Estate: How Low Will Prices Go?”.
Click on the image below to RSVP!
Tags: New York Times, NYT Real Estate, Frances Katzen, COVID-19, Coronavirus, Stefanos Chen, Nancy Packes, Zoom
I was recently interviewed by James Nelson, one of New York commercial real estate’s star brokers at Avison Young whom I’ve known since his Massey Knakal days. I’ve been on his podcast several times over the years and always enjoy the conversation. This time he did the interview at CUNY studios in Manhattan. In addition, he brought in Vince Rocco, a residential real estate agent at Halstead who has a broker-centric podcast known as “Good Morning New York Real Estate with Vince Rocco.” I had never met Vince before so it was nice to get his perspective on the market.
Tags: James Nelson, Avison Young, The Nelson Report, CUNY, Vince Rocco, Halstead, Good Morning New York, Real Estate with Vince Rocco
I’ve been following Dan Gershburg‘s Twitter handle for quite a while and found it to be a great resource for pretty much everything. He’s a real estate attorney and we got to know each other a little bit over the ultraweb. Eventually he invited me to join him on his podcast. I got to talk with him about a few things outside my usual discourse: my concept of “neutrality” and how I got started (and who doesn’t want to wax on poetic about themselves for 45 minutes?) I enjoyed the discussion and I think you will too.
Tags: Daniel Gershburg
I’m looking forward to moderating a great REBNY panel for the Residential Brokerage Division Owners and Managers Breakfast on June 13th. Owners/Principals of Residential Brokerage Firms and Residential Managers can signup here.
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Public
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Speaking about the state of the real estate market tomorrow morning. Looking forward to it! The cool graphic below is enough of a reason to attend. 😉
The original invite graphic was also pretty cool.
Tags: Douglas Elliman, Fredrik Eklund, John Gomes, Bruce Eichner, Madison Square Park Tower, DEDM, Douglas Elliman Development Marketing
I’m moderating a great panel in Stamford, CT for the Fairfield/Westchester Chapter of the Real Estate Finance Association (REFA) on October 25, 2016 titled:
Residential Real Estate has been one of the bright spots in the local economy in recent years. The single family market continues to post record sales volumes and the growth of the multi-family market in Fairfield County has been dramatic. However, there is mount- ing concern about perceived over-building at the top end of the luxury single family and multi-family markets. Where is the demand coming from? Will it continue? What prod- uct do people want? Where are we headed? We look forward to a lively and informative program.
The response so far has been heavy – click here for more information or to sign up.
Tags: William Raveis Real Estate, REFA, Fairfield/Westchester Chapter of REFA, Amy Kane, Gregory Belew, Alliance Residential Company, Jeff Dunne, CBRE, Real Estate Finance Association
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Radio
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A while back I was interviewed by my friend Barry Ritholtz for his new radio show/podcast Masters in Business for Bloomberg. He is columnist for Bloomberg View and the Washington Post, founder/blogger at the Big Picture blog and is one of the smartest people (and definitely the best story teller), I’ve ever met.
I have been remiss in posting this on Matrix but had already sent it through all my social media channels a number of times earlier this month when the interview originally aired. It’s the end of 2014 and as one of my favorite interviews, it just needed to be on Matrix.
We cover a lot of ground on the housing market and it was fun and engaging. Our roles were reversed since he was one of my early interviews of my former podcast The Housing Helix from 2009-2012 where I interviewed about 150 people connected to housing and finance. Barry returned to my show 2 more times and each time made it one of the most heavily downloaded interviews of the year.
Please subscribe to his Masters in Business podcast on Bloomberg or listen to it live on Saturdays.
Tags: Barry Ritholtz, Big Picture Blog, Masters in Business, Podcast
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Public
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Since it’s the end of the year, I’ve been thinking about some of my favorite events 2014. This past November, I was invited to keynote and moderate the main panel at the Urban Land Institute’s, Southeast FL/Caribbean District Council’s Miami Condo Market Symposium.
My panel included the heavy hitters of condo development and brokerage in South Florida – who spoke candidly in front of a sold out venue at the Epic Residences & Hotel:
– Ugo Colombo, Founder, CMC Group Inc.
– Eduardo Costantini, Chairman, Consultatio Real Estate Inc.
– Richard LeFrak, Chairman & CEO, LeFrak Organization
– Howard Lorber, CEO, Vector Group Ltd. & Chairman, Douglas Elliman
– Jorge Perez, Chairman, CEO & Founder, The Related Group
A recap of my panel and the other speakers and panels…
Photos…
Tags: Ugo Colombo, CMC Group Inc., Eduardo Costantini, Richard LeFrak, Howard Lorber, Jorge Perez, The Related Group, Vanessa Grout, Jay Parker
I was invited to speak at the Great Lakes Chapter of the Appraisal Institute last week and met a lot of great appraisers who cover the state of Michigan.
I spoke about the housing market and the misinterpretation of residential housing metrics, inspired by this article and the following infographic from the Detroit Free Press.
Inkster +106.4% !!!!! a largely distressed market with what I was told only has a handful of rock bottom sales ie $10K in 2009 becomes to $30k in 2014 – a perfect example. Hot? Hardly.
As much as I think I held their attention for the entire hour allotted, my presentation fell short of getting audience adrenaline pumping like the Jordan Petkovsky, the Chief Appraiser of a TSI Appraisal, a large national AMC and affiliated with Quicken Loans. I still wonder how beneficial this public relations could be by talking to the industry like a politician – as if residential appraisers were clueless to the “incredible benefit” that AMCs provide our industry.
Here are a few of the questions (paraphrased) posed to an audience comprised of heavily experienced residential and commercial appraisers:
Q: “I realize there is friction between AMCs and appraisers. What has to happen to solve this problem?”
A: Someone in audience: “Someone has to die” followed by a burst of laughter from the entire room.
Q: “We spend millions on powerful analytics. Wouldn’t it be great for appraisers to get their hands on this technology?” (repeated 2 more times slowly for effect).”
A: Someone answered: “You have to spend millions on technology because the appraisal quality is so poor you need to analyze the markets yourself.”
Q: “How do we attract new appraisers into the business?”
A: My answer “Until appraisers are fairly compensated when banks are made to be financially incentivized to require credible reports, nothing will change.”
Q: “How do you think banks feel about the reliability of appraisals today? They don’t feel the values are reliable.”
A: My answer “Because AMCs pay ±half the market rate, they can only mostly attract form-fillers (aka “corner-cutters”). They don’t represent the good appraisers in the appraisal industry.”
Q: “We focus a tremendous amount of effort on regulatory compliance on behalf of banks and boy are they demanding! We even have a full time position that handles the compliance issues.”
A: My comment – that’s a recurring mantra from the AMC industry as a scare tactic to keep banks from returning to in-house appraisal departments. Prior to 2006 boom and bust cycle and the explosion of mortgage brokers with an inherent conflict of interest as orderers of appraisals, the profession was pretty good at providing reliable value estimates. The unusually large demands by regulators (if this is really true and I have serious doubts) is because the AMC appraisal quality is generally poor. If bank appraisal quality was excellent, I don’t believe there would be a lot of regulatory inquiries besides periodic audits.
What I found troubling with his presentation – and I have to give him credit for walking into the lion’s den – is how the conversation was framed in such an AMC-centric, self-absorbed way. I keep hearing this story pushed by the AMC industry: The destruction of the modern appraisal industry was the fault of a few “bad actors” during the boom that used appraisal trainees to crank out their reports. That’s incredibly out of context and a few “bad actors” isn’t the only reason HVCC was created – which was clearly inferred.
Back during the boom, banks closed their in-house appraisal centers because they came to view them as “cost centers” since risk was eliminated through financial engineering – plus mortgage brokers accounted for 2/3 of the mortgage volume. Mortgage brokers only got paid when the loan closed, so guess what kind of appraisers were selected? Those who were more likely to hit the number – they were usually not selected on the basis of quality unless the bank mandated their use. Banks were forced to expand their reliance on AMCs after the financial crisis because the majority of their relationships with appraisers had been removed during the bubble – the mortgage brokerage industry imploded and banks weren’t interested in re-opening appraisal departments because they don’t generate short term revenue.
The speaker spent a lot of time talking like a politician – “we all have to work together to solve this problem” “appraisers have to invest in technology.” When asked whether his firm had an “AVM”, he responded almost too quickly with “No” and then added “but you should see our analytics!”
The residential appraisers in the audience were largely seething after the presentation based on the conversations I heard or joined with afterwords.
It’s really sad that appraisers don’t have a real voice in our future. We’ve never had the money to sway policy creation and we can’t prevent the re-write of history.
But we’re clearly not the “bad actor.”
Tags: Quicken Loans, Appraisal Institute, AMC, Home Valuation Code of Conduct, HVCC, Michigan, Appraisal Management Companies, Jordan Petkovsky, TSI Appraisal, Great Lakes Chapter
I just returned from an incredibly helpful and fun annual appraisal conference in Texas. I was asked to make a presentation and ended up joining their board of directors. I’ve been a member of RAC (Relocation Appraisers & Consultants) for about 20 years and even though the organization started out with a primary emphasis on relocation appraisals in the early 1990s, RAC is so much more than that. Most of the members provide expertise in complex residential with a lot of work in litigation support. The quality of the residential appraisers in this organization is the best in the country – bar none. Most of the mainstream US appraisal trade groups emphasize or have a majority concentration of commercial appraisals and RAC fills the void.
Seminars
Having fun filming a video with clients
Tags: Texas, TRN, Dallas, Relocation Appraiser & Consultants, RAC, Conference, Relocation
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Jonathan Miller is President and CEO of Miller Samuel Inc., a real estate appraisal and consulting firm he co-founded in 1986. He is a state-certified real estate appraiser in New York and Connecticut, performing court testimony as an expert witness in various local, state, and federal courts. He holds the Counselors of Real Estate (CRE) designation, is an Appraiser “A” Member of the Real Estate Board of New York, and is a member of RAC.
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Forbes ('20-)
Appraisersblogs ('17-)
'Three Cents Worth' column 3CW ('05-'16)
When Curbed was acquired by Vox, my eleven years of 3CW chart art and column links were broken on Curbed NY, Curbed DC, Curbed Miami, Curbed Hamptons, Curbed LA, and Curbed Ski.
Many of my 3CW charts can be found here:
Curbed 3CW Full Chart Archive
Op-ed column ('14-'15)
'Economic Spotlight column ('03-'09)
New York Times experiment ('08-09')
Huffington Post (09')
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