You would not know there is a market slowdown according to surveys that find Americans have not shut their wallets, defying predictions.  And this is where I wanted to make a point.  Predictions are like a game of pure luck.  You are either right or wrong.  "Experts" know this and bank on a fifty chance to be able to claim they knew something was to happen.  It is a game where consumers are taken in on a ride and much importance are placed on people that only observe but might not really know what is happening at the heart of it all.  Does anyone remember the last housing bubble?  How many experts "predicted" it would end?  How many predicted otherwise?  It is actually funny to look back but there was as much guess work back ten as there is today.  The problem is that people listen and act on those predictions, thus making them self fulfilling prophecies.

Consumers have increased their purchases of goods and services at an inflation-adjusted annual rate of more than 3% this year, in the ist of a housing cool off.  It defies logic after years of high real-estate prices, with low-interest financing options have given consumers a chance borrow against the rising value of their homes to pay for many things.  Many economists predicted the slowdown in the housing market would stop this and make Americans save.

Read on to see what the Real Estate Journal has to say about it.  They do write that the trend has slowed from last year. 

While the world gets on to use technology, the real estate industry is pushing new innovation and technological features that have yet to take roots.  The problem is, of course, most of these technologies are either hype or do not really serve agents, while most offices could use many innovations, there is a lack of proper understanding and implementation vision in that field.

A few months back I wrote about another sleeping culprit, the MLS database system.  Happy with the way things are, their business model is content sitting on a cash cow.  Agents pay an absurd amount of money for quirky databases, often written ten years ago and ill-fitted to the current needs of our market.  However there is good news, some MLS systems are awakening.  Three well-known listing sites in Northern California pooling their resources together to share real-time property listing information.  It is about time.

Providing practitioners a one-stop access to real-time property listing information covering a vast geographic area is what agents should get but never really do.  In fact, after having to navigate through about a third of "misplaced" properties usually in nicer areas than they are, you can finally sift through a few other layers until you zone in on your criteria.  Hardly effecient, highly annoying and all blamed on the Realtor "misplacing" their properties, conveniently in better areas. 

This is the future of any MLS that wants to compete in the future, co-existence, wide area reach and interoperation.

Here is a link to The reporte.