Not "living in tents" -- yet
January 14, 2009 12:15PM
Prudential Douglas Elliman CEO Dottie Herman says the real estate industry went through "a period of shock" in September. But Herman -- who was speaking on an Inman News panel at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square late last week -- said she "has to assume that most of the guys on the top end of the financial market made enough to survive -- at least a year or two." David Michonski, CEO and Chairman of Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy, chimed in that "they are not living in tents," to which Herman jokingly replied: "Not yet. Because that was an alternative business we were putting together." Meanwhile, appraiser Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel and another panelist at the three-day Inman conference, said he's viewed the last seven or eight years as "more of a mortgage boom than a housing boom." For excerpts of the panel discussion, click on the video below.
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Comments
Anonymous
I guess you're the butt of the joke.
Comment #1 Posted By: Anonymous 01/14/09
Anonymous
They do need a place to live, and may not sell. Or maybe they will since they spent that 3 years of money on bad investments including vacation homes. Even if they don't sell, they are certainly not buying.
Comment #2 Posted By: Anonymous 01/14/09
Anonymous
Jonathan - don't you realize you can't a free market system with government regulation - that's not a free market - free market and regulation can't exist at the same time. Going forward we need less regulation not more. If government wouldn't have gotten involved in our markets this never would have happened.
Comment #3 Posted By: Anonymous 01/14/09
Edd Gillespie
Doesn't Anonymous # 3 yet realize that the free market can only exist efficiently with a free flow of information and when the flow of information meets the hurdles of "lack of transparency" and deliberate disinformation everything will implode? What we are seeing is the reaction of consumers with good sense to being lied to and ripped off. It has nothing at all to do with government, although government seems to be perennially in the same pocket where the money is. Our government exists in large part to protect the country and you have only to look at what these economic terrorists have accomplished to know the government failed miserably in that job. This mess is the fault of too little oversight of the crooks not too much government intervention.
Comment #4 Posted By: Edd Gillespie 01/15/09
Jonathan Miller
Anon #3 - free market. not sure what market you are talking about but in case you've been away, free markets in a pure sense, failed in the financial services word. Hands off eventually evolves into chaos. The playing field needs checks and balances or it is not free to operate in a long term functioning market. What I call for is smart regulation and a lot less of it. A big difference from the simplistic message you seem to be saying. Its not an either or argument.
Comment #5 Posted By: Jonathan Miller 01/15/09