brokers-051109.jpg
Last Thursday night, the Real Estate Board of New York held a panel discussion about the impact that the bear market in real estate is having on the brokerage industry. Here are some choice quotes courtesy of The Real Deal.

“You can’t get financing for anything that isn’t 50 percent sold, and in some cases, 70 percent.” — Hal Wilkie, Brown Harris Stevens

“Development is going to be very quiet if not non-existent for the next three years.” — Diane Ramirez, Halstead

“[The current market] forces you to focus like a fat man who got a heart attack, then started to exercise.” — Barak Dunayer, Barak Realty

“[Agents should] figure it out, because there’s always opportunity.” — Dottie Herman, Douglas Elliman

Corcoran chief Pam Liebman’s comment from last week fits right in to this context: “A lot of brokers won’t survive this.”
Real Estate Firms and Brokers Need to Think Thin [TRD]


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

Leave a Reply

  1. Real Estate will return but not with this class of real estate agents. Like the Cocorean agent said. Homes will sell as soon as both the agents and real estate agents realize they have to lower the asking price by 50 percent. That is going to take a long time because just a few years ago alot of gullable buyers were suckered in by dishonest and greedy real estate brokers.

  2. Your right, a lot of of the new construction is crap, unless you have a world class architect and a first rate construction company (Bovis, etc.), not these day workers who really have to be consistently supervised by the constuction manager who sits around watching and smoking. Buyers Beware. One more thing, how do units in a building get 50% sold if there is no financing available? I guess you need all cash buyers, who are willing to take a BIG CHANCE. Like 1 Brooklyn Bridge Park. I heard, they are having a hard time selling those units. Despite, Elizabeth Stribling who purchased a so call $6 million apartment. I am wondering if that was a publicity stint? Well, it’s a shame the real estate market is at a pause, hopefully it will pick up, but my guess is, it won’t be for a few years.

  3. Seems like a lot of the development over the last few years were based on questionable assumptions.. people somehow thought they can discard common sense. The biggest offenders are all those high-rise buildings in non-residential or weird locations… I don’t get the appeal. I think places that are not too ugly, and in decent locations will be ok in the long (or very long) run, but that only covers like 20% of the stuff that was built. And makes sense that nothing new will get built for a few years.