A Real Estate "Titan" Comes Clean

Did you see this in the LA Times?

Speaking to a gathering of industry professionals Friday, longtime California real estate titan Fred C. Sands called the housing market "pathetic" and said some agents needed to start looking for other work...

In the short term, the local real estate market "is not going to get better," Sands said...

He added that he could speak with candor because he was no longer in the home-selling business...

Such frank remarks are rare at gatherings of famously upbeat real estate agents, but Sands said those in the business needed to remember the last slump and realize "the last five or six years were not normal."...

The soaring market of a few years ago will be followed by a correspondingly sharp decline, he said: "The longer the up cycle, the more excess there is, and the worse it is for what follows." ...

But wealthy areas won't escape unscathed, Sand said...

"We saw 25-year-old guys buying $3-million houses," he said of the questionable mortgage practices of recent years. "Someone who makes $100,000 a year can't afford a $2-million house, but that's what's been going on," Sands said...

"The idea that everyone is supposed to own a home is baloney," he added...

Sands counseled agents that property prices must be cut drastically to "get in front of the crisis." Otherwise, agents will "follow it down like a dope" and get even less for the properties, if they can sell them at all, he said...

Long [president of the Southern California region of Sotheby's International Realty Inc.] counseled agents to drop sellers who aren't willing to lower prices. "Let go of the fear another agent will take over and sell it -- they won't," he said...

Agents should "go with the flow" by using the downturn to prod buyers, he said. "We are salespeople. We have to be positive."...

That remark prompted Sands to interject: "But if you go too far, you lose credibility. People need to know what's happening."...

Sorry that I have to be the one to break the news to you boys, but you and your industry lost credibility a long time ago.

Why? You said it yourself Mr. Sands: you can now "speak with candor" because you are "no longer in the home-selling business".

Coming clean now is all well and good, but buyers needed that candor a long time ago. So you are still on the tar-and-feathering list.

Is there anybody out there who still believes what a realtor/agent says? Anyone?