I was doing some research today and came across an article on Realtor.org from 12-01-2006 about The Top 25 Most Influential Thought Leaders in Real Estate. After a list of 25 builders of the status quo, they had a runner-up list of 15.
Robert Schiller made that list, here is the “why”:
Got big media coverage equating rising real estate prices with the tech bubble, but we haven’t heard the pop yet.
Robert Shiller scored instant media celebrity when his 2000 book, Irrational Exuberance, predicted the tech bubble’s explosion just weeks before the fact. Four years later, when he tried to apply the same principles to the real estate boom, he found out that all investments don’t behave alike. Shiller contended that rising home prices weren’t based in the fundamentals of population growth and supply and demand; they were bubbles, destined to pop.
To the contrary, NAR economists predicted that market slowdowns would largely be gradual—a trend that’s playing out today. Shiller’s failed bubble scenario demonstrates that sometimes even smart guys get it wrong.
Yeah, and sometimes economists who work for the status quo get it SO wrong it makes you laugh out loud.
By December 2006, wasn’t it already becoming clear that sub-prime was a the tip of the iceberg? The Kool Aid must have been strong at Realtor.org for them to tempt fate so blatantly.
Jeff Brown says:
One wonders why they thought he was so wrong when he’d been so right so recently on such a large scale. Agendas sporting blinders — a sure recipe for calamity. Thanks for sharing.
July 15, 2009 — 12:36 pm
Tony Arko says:
Wasting our hard earned dues on economists who spit out drivel about other economists who are completely right. Way to go NAR!!!
July 15, 2009 — 12:56 pm
Jodi Tussing says:
You live! oh – go redfin?
July 15, 2009 — 5:38 pm
Cheryl Johnson says:
Interesting to note: Angelo R. Mozilo also made that runner-up list. 🙂
July 16, 2009 — 7:59 am
John Rowles says:
@ Cheryl:
Ah, yes, the CEO of Countrywide, whose great “innovation” was, as Matt Taibbi put in his hit-job on Goldman, to lower underwriting standards to the point where they “…started writing mortgages on the backs of napkins to cocktail waitresses and ex-cons carrying five bucks and a Snickers bar.”
July 16, 2009 — 9:38 am