In an economic downturn, many people take the opportunity to reinvent or reinvest in themselves and go back to school, take classes, seminars etc.

There is a lot of conflicting information and statements made on the housing market these days. We launched MillerQA to provide an easy way for busy professionals to gain insights on the housing market that may help them or their clients make more informed decisions. And obtain continuing education credits at the same time.*

*Application for accreditation of this program in New York is currently pending. Real estate agents, attorneys and accountants can visit millerqa.com for continuing education status.

MillerQA Press Release

A little background…
Two years ago, John Cicero, my partner in our commercial valuation firm Miller Cicero suggested we create a seminar program since he has taught property valuation at NYU and Baruch and I speak more than 50 times a year on market conditions in the NYC metro area and the national housing market. We got busy with other things and two years went by. My wife Cheryl and my sister Dina, co-founders of our appraisal firm Miller Samuel and I began to kick this idea around again. So I called my friend Karen van de Vrande, former Chief Marketing Officer for Prudential Douglas Elliman to join us and help make this idea happen. All 5 of us spent the next 4 months brainstorming.

We learned two things:

1. we get along
2. we need make the experience interactive.

Thus, MillerQA was born. The “QA” represents Q&A sessions after each presentation and the commitment to making this an interactive experience.

John came up with a cool idea of adding iClickers to our seminars so the audience can participate, something his kids use in college. And my wife came up with our mantra:

Fostering Market Understanding

I hope you can join us.

It’s time to share my Three Cents Worth on Curbed, at the intersection of neighborhood and real estate.

…There’s always hype surrounding the likely jump in available Manhattan inventory for the month of September, after the Labor Day weekend. Slow news cycles, people wrapping up their summer, sellers waiting until after the holiday, kids getting back to school—they all seem to provide a summer bookend for listing activity…

Three Cents Worth: 30 Days Hath September Inventory

[Click to expand and read full post on Curbed]

Check out previous Three Cents Worth posts.

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AnnaMaria Andriotis at SmartMoney asked me to look at the state of maintenance charges for Manhattan co-ops on an annualized basis.

It’s generally easier to look at maintenance charges for co-ops on a per square foot basis per month (ie a 1,000 sq ft apartment with a $1,500 monthly maintenance is $1.50/sqft/month). It more readily enables side-by-side comparisons.

I pulled out the research I did in 2005 since it went back 20 years (on a 5 year basis). I updated it annually from that point. As a result the chart is split by 5 and 1 year breakdowns with 2005 as the divider. I should point out that 2010 reflected year to date.

Maintenance increased 19% this year after seeing nominal changes since 2006. While charges have clearly increased this year, it is not clear whether this is the beginning of a trend or simply an anomaly. In a tentative housing market, it is a concern. We last saw a double digit jump from 2005 to 2006 with an 11% increase. Specific issues like energy costs aside, I would speculate that the era of low mortgage rates has enabled less restraint on maintenance growth over the past two decades.

A few months ago I met Mark Stark, CEO of Prudential Americana Group in Las Vegas, NV so I thought I’d ask him to have a conversation about the challenges of his market. Mark is very candid about his market and we had a compelling conversation.

Check out the podcast.

The Housing Helix Podcast Interview List

You can subscribe on iTunes or simply listen to the podcast on my other blog The Housing Helix.

[click to open article]

In the aftermath of federal tax credit for first time buyers and existing homeowners as part of the stimulus program, I newly appreciated one key thing: buyers and sellers modify their behavior to work a tax to their best advantage. The other takeaway is how naive governments tend to be when imposing such a tax – something about not understanding basic economics.

This was reinforced when Sarabeth Sanders of The Real Deal Magazine asked me to look at the impact of the “mansion tax” on housing market behavior.

In my research I found a disproportionate cluster of activity between $975,000 and $999,000.

To arrive at this I parsed all Manhattan residential sales (co-ops, condos, 1-3 family properties) over the past five years into $25,000 segments from $900,000 to $1,100,000 to see if there was a pattern. Of course I have long experienced this first hand in our appraisal company but never showed it empirically. Granted this is a correlation analysis, not causation analysis since it could be some other factor I am not aware of. However I am confident that the tax motivates this price behavior. The seller or buyer often work out some other consideration to keep the price just under $1M.

Six-figure discount Skirting the mansion tax in a buyer’s market [The Real Deal]

It’s time to share my Three Cents Worth on Curbed, at the intersection of neighborhood and real estate.

I thought I’d take a look at each of the five boroughs to review the market ordeal we went through before the third-quarter numbers come in and we hit the fall market. I presented sales and price trends for all five boroughs by year over year quarterly percent change…

Three Cents Worth: Charting the Seven-Year Sales and Price Itch

[Click to expand and read full post on Curbed]

[Click to expand and read full post on Curbed]

Check out previous Three Cents Worth posts.

For each week’s Eye on Real Estate Show on WOR NewsTalk Radio 710, we include a segment called “The BlogCast” where I discuss housing related (sometimes a stretch) posts from some of my favorite blogs and web sites. They cover topics that are current, funny or simply a “must read”.

Saturday’s BlogCast covered the following blog posts:

[Refin] You Only Get One Chance to Make a First Impression. Price correctly right from the start when listing your house for sale.

[The Mortgage Porter] The Cash-In Refi. 22% of refi’s include people that pay in to get a better rate.

[Ritholtz/The Big Picture] History of US Interest Rates: 1790-Present. Other than WWII, rates are at their lowest level in a few hundred years.

I’ve been pretty inconsistent posting my Blogcast links recently, but the summer heat messes with my consistency.

If you missed this past Saturday’s show or any prior show, you can listen to the podcast at any time or subscribe to it for free via iTunes to always get the latest show delivered automatically to your computer or handheld device. My Blogcast is usually in the first hour of the show.

Listen to the most recent Eye on Real Estate podcast.

Subscribe to the free weekly Eye on Real Estate podcast.

Become a fan on Facebook.

Or visit the Eye on Real Estate Website.

More on the housing market declines posted for existing home sales and new home sales.

Kirsten Cole of WCBS-2 came by this afternoon to do the interview – if I had 20% of her energy…

I wasn’t too sharp in this interview but gave a bunch of background.

I was invited on CNBC’s Kudlow Report sans Kudlow – Guest hosted by Michelle Caruso-Cabrera. I was matched with Miami attorney Shari Olefson and CNBC’s Diana Olick.

The topic was “American Dream Dead?”

Answer: Of course not.

The housing hysteria a la post-tax credit is something I commented on in the beginning of the year. The sharp declines in home sales was NOT an organic phenomenon and should not have surprised anyone. Propped up artificially in the first half of the year and therefore down artificially after its expiration – future sales were poached for current gains.

Basically not much has changed other than the expiration of the tax credit but consumers and pundits reading page one newspaper storie, tv coverage paired with a slowing economy will likely exaggerate the weakness in the already weak housing – a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Still – its fun to do these.

Here’s a few snippets from yesterday’s NAR Existing Home Sale report…

Some commentary on what the existing home sale numbers mean…

A small unemployment rant for BBC…

And in Brazil…