I’m a longtime fan of This American Life, a weekly, hour-long Public Radio International radio show that covers a variety of eclectic topics. I subscribe to their free podcats and listen when I can. This morning at the gym, I clicked on my iPod to listen to their latest program, entitled THE GIANT POOL OF MONEY.  Turns out it’s a wonderfully cogent, entertaining (and infuriating, when you think about it) explanation of exactly how we got into the mortgage mess we’re in.
Here’s how they bill it:

A special program about the housing crisis. We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis have to do with the collapse of the investment bank Bear Stearns? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s? It all comes back to the Giant Pool of Money.

For REALTORS® and the folks who love them (and work for them, like I do), I’d say it’s a must-listen-to. Here’s the direct link to download it for your iPod or other mp3-playing gadget:

http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=355

You can also subscribe to This American Life on iTunes. It’s a free weekly podcast. Just search “This American Life.”

I have writer’s block. The deadline for my column in VAR’s Commonwealth Magazine passed earlier this week, and I’ve yet to type a word of anything coherent (no wry comments, please).

So here’s the deal: YOU can help me write the column. Don’t worry, it’s not difficult. All it requires is a sense of humor and the recollection of a song or two.

ANNOUNCING: Scott’s “Songs for an Economic Slump” Contest….

Here’s the premise: In the great soundtrack of life, even an economic slump needs its own theme song.

Below are several categories. Your job is to suggest a song title or snippet of lyrics – from actual, reasonably mainstream music – that in your opinion summarizes the particular category. Just leave your suggestion in the comments on this post. I’ll take the best suggestions…determined solely by me and my own subjective and somewhat warped sense of humor…and publish them in my June Commonwealth column. (And no, this contest is NOT just limited to Virginia REALTORS®.)

So be creative. Be clever. Just be helpful. I really do need to finish this @#!% column. Deadline for submissions is Monday at 5 p.m. EDT, and you can make recommendations in any or all categories.

1. SONGS YEARNING FOR THE HOUSING MARKETS OF 2004-2006

2. SONGS FOR SUBPRIME LENDERS

3. SONGS FOR ECONOMISTS WHO DIDN’T SEE THIS COMING

4. SAD SONGS FOR SHORT-SELLERS WHO THOUGHT THEIR NO-MONEY-DOWN A.R.M. WAS A SWEET DEAL

5. SONGS FOR UNREALISTIC SELLERS AND THE REALTORS® WHO OVERPRICE THEM

6. SONGS OF THOSE ADVOCATING A FEDERAL BAILOUT

7. SONGS DESCRIBING THE WHOLE, CURSED ECONOMIC MESS

Now go to it. I look forward to hearing your entries!

I spent the latter part of last week near Staunton facilitating a two-day planning retreat with Harrisonburg/Rockingham County REALTOR® leaders. The committee did great work charting a course for their 380-member association for the next three years or so. While what follows here is only a draft at this point, but thought you might be interested in their strategic goals (I’ve eliminated the actual objective below for brevity’s sake).

MISSION (Why we exist):
HRAR fosters its members’ career success by providing services, training, and information that enhance their professionalism and credibility in our community.

ENVISIONED FUTURE (What the future will look like with the implementation of this plan):
• HRAR is truly seen as the voice for real estate in the Central Shenandoah Valley.
• The public views HRAR members as professional and competent community leaders.
• Members view HRAR as an irreplaceable business resource, are proud of their association, and are actively engaged in its programs and activities.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES (Our plan of work):
I. COMMUNITY ADVOCACY AND INVOLVEMENT / HRAR advocates for members’ and consumers’ interests through interaction with the public, policy makers, civic organizations and the media.
II. MEMBER PROFESSIONALISM AND CREDIBILITY / HRAR members conduct themselves in the highest professional manner and are respected by their peers and the public.
III. MEMBER COMPETENCE / HRAR members have the training and skills necessary to meet the evolving needs of today’s consumer and achieve business success.
IV. TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM / HRAR members are served by innovative technology tools that maximize their productivity and business success.
V. ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS / HRAR operates in an efficient, effective, proactive manner with a focus on delivering value to members and ensuring the association’s viability.

Find the complete draft here: hrar-draft-plan.doc

In coming weeks, they’ll be sharing the plan with their members and seeking input before they actually finalize and adopt it. Thanks and congrats to HRAR President Steve Hill for his leadership on this project.

Scott Rogers, with Coldwell Banker Funkhouser in Harrisonburg, VA, I mean.

Amid all the hyperbole and sweeping generalization in the media about the state of real estate markets nationwide, Rogers had added a dose of reality to that most-essential of REALTOR® marketing branding tools: He’s added his market’s monthly home sales data to the back of his business card. Clever, huh? Good conversation starter, certainly. Business tool? Absolutely. And remarkably low-tech (though of course he does direct folks to his blog for “more analysis”).

And yes, he prints new cards every month.

Ken Harney in today’s Washington Post:

Could designations of Zip codes, metropolitan areas and entire states as “declining markets” hinder a real estate recovery and hurt minority groups and moderate-income buyers disproportionately? Growing ranks of critics say yes.

Since late 2007, most lenders, insurers and mortgage investment firms have compiled lists of markets that they regard as higher risks because housing values are dropping. In those areas, borrowers are charged higher rates and loan fees and are required to make bigger down payments — costs that can rise significantly when applicants have credit scores below designated minimum levels.

In some cases, the extra fees can add more than two percentage points to the interest rate and require much more cash up front. At their extreme, declining-market designations remove entire categories of real estate from financing eligibility. Some private mortgage insurers, for instance, won’t touch second homes or rental-home investments anywhere in large swaths of Florida and California.

Industry estimates on affected Zip codes range from 8,000 to more than 12,000 across the country. Many parts of the Washington area are included.

Full story here.

This is excellent perspective, compiled by Charlottesville Association president Judy Savage and blogged by CAAR’s CEO, Dave Phillips.

This from last Friday’s WSJ, on Moody’s and the other bond rating agencies’ complicity in bringing about the current market crisis.

This from last Thursday’s WSJ on lessons learned from the current housing crisis. Here’s a snippet:

The great American experiment with homeownership for all and mortgages for everyone is over.

Millions of homeowners will lose their houses. The government is scurrying to minimize the damage to the nation’s economy and banking system. Wall Street is picking shards out of its hide. Politicians are beseeching experts for ways to prevent a recurrence. Academics are straining to find the right historical analogy and tally the losses. And the press is looking for people to blame.

In this cacophony, it’s hard to hear a couple of important questions, let alone the answers: What have we learned about providing affordable housing to low-income Americans? And can the current “oversupply” of housing be used as subsidized shelter for those who need it?

Making every American adult a homeowner was always imprudent and impractical; now that’s obvious. Four years ago, President Bush declared: “The more people who own their home, the better off America is.” And as his administration proposed federal guarantees for mortgages without requiring down payments, then-Federal Housing Commissioner John Weicher told me in 2004: “We will have some defaults, but nearly all those families will remain homeowners.”

It was true then, and clear today, that some people should rent. Some Americans don’t earn enough to pay for a mortgage and maintain a house; in recent years, mortgage brokers worried little about the first concern and never mentioned the second. Homeownership can give Americans a stake in society and help build savings — but not if they don’t have any equity in their homes. Better to help them open savings or retirement accounts.

And this from the Calculated Risk blog, from a recent Wachovia conference call on how it views consumers “walking away” from mortgage obligations. Here’s a quote from Wachovia’s chief risk officer:

The severities in the market place when we take a house back, it takes a lower price to get homes sold and our outlook is — and as I think everybody has been reading, there is an expectation that there’s a broad accumulation of foreclosed properties that haven’t hit the market yet and perhaps even some shadow foreclosures that haven’t emerged as yet. So our concern, looking forward is that — and again, what we’re beginning to see more evidence of and sense more of in the first quarter is that conditions are going to continue to get tougher and there’s an overhang of inventory out there that is going to be costly for the industry to work through.

And on that cheery note…Good day.

Several times in recent weeks I’ve read blog posts horn-tooting about how the blogger had now achieved a certain number of friends on Facebook or connections on LinkedIn, and thanking their adoring fans contacts for helping them achieve that significant milestone. “Stop the presses!” I think to myself (an unfortunately anachronistic exclamation, in this case), trying to figure out why such self-serving announcements are remotely newsworthy — particularly in light of the fact that I’m betting a goodly number of those LinkedIn folks are people you’ve never met (See my friend Cindy Butts’ rather astute take on that phenomenon here). While I subscribe to that blog for a reason (I generally get value from the blogger’s opinions and perspectives), helping him rejoice in his large number of “friends” (I use the term loosely) is not that reason. So why is he clogging my feedreader with such useless, conceited pap? Get over yourself, I want to say.

This, I think, is different from achieving a milestone in terms of number of subscribers to your blog; even magazines brag about such things. Having a large number of people read you says something about your credibility, and is worth telling (though not too often).

But friends on Facebook or connections on LinkIn? I’m sorry, but I don’t care. Unless I should care, and I’m missing the point.

Am I missing a potentially beneficial opportunity to brag about how many friends I have on LinkedIn? (148 as of this morning, including a few I don’t really know, but I didn’t want to hurt their feelings.)

So as my friend (and VAR past president) Kit Hale of Roanoke likes to say: “Help me understand…”

Info here.

I asked our membership staff to run a generational analysis of VAR members according to how long they’d been in the business. Interesting results:

In the business 5 years or fewer:

Pre-Boomer (Born 1946 or earlier) 6% / Boomer (1946-1964) 34% / Gen X (1965-1976) 43% / Gen Y (1976- ) 17%

In the business more than 5 years:

Pre-Boomer (Born 1946 or earlier) 25% / Boomer (1946-1964) 56% / Gen X (1965-1976) 17% / Gen Y (1976- ) 2%

In the business more than 10 years:

Pre-Boomer (Born 1946 or earlier) 35% / Boomer (1946-1964) 57% / Gen X (1965-1976) 8% / Gen Y (1976- ) 0%

It’s also notable that a whopping 75% of our approximately 36,000 members have been in the business 10 years or fewer, and thus had never before seen the kind of market conditions we’re now experiencing.

As VAR’s CEO, there are several conclusions I can draw from this data that can help direct how VAR communicates with and engages our members, as well as the kinds of training and support they might expect from us. More about that when I have a random minute to think out loud….