[Housing Market Seminars] MillerQA Launched
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Wednesday, September 8, 2010, 7:10 PM
5 Comments
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.
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:
- we get along
- 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.
Why not put this on line like a webinar so the hicks can participate. Not that I’m buying a condo in NYC, but I learn stuff about appraising every day just from the blog. One thing I have not learned yet is why the average New Yorker wants to live there and pay those astronomical cost of living prices.
You are reading my mind Edd! We will be doing this in the near future. Subscribers will be able to view online content. In fact, for the first event on October 7th, we will have a videographer to capture it.
OK, Send me a copy or make it downloadable at a reasonable cost since distance denies me the opportunity to heckle the podium and that is an element of value. But darn, I really wanted to operate a clicker. I never did it in a lecture before. I can imagine clickering since I saw on PBS it is a New Year’s tradition in Tibet or maybe it was Fiji, but I wanted to see what kind of a reaction it gets in NYC. Take a picture would you?
This is going to be a lot easier than reading your mind. A lot, trust me.
Jon, Its hard to make a sweeping statement that applies to the entire real estate market as its vast and it really changes block to block in any given city. I will say in my market (Phoenix) many homes are sold below cost to build. If some people want housing to become cheaper, how can they expect it to go much lower as you can’t build it as cheap as you can buy it? It makes no sense. It can really only go up. I expect a slow steady increase. It may go down in more expensive markets but I can’t see how (maybe I can, I saw the $1 for a house in Detroit).
Yes you are absolutely correct – but that is what the consumer is being fed on a daily basis. Markets can vary block by block – but not if you rely on press release titles and the first few sentences of an article. As valuation experts, we see a lot of nuance and we are attempting to shed insight on what these reports suggest and what you may want to look for in your market. We take for granted that everyone sees the market just like we do.