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NAR to promote home sales

By Justin Hunter

It has been well documented that home sales have drastically plummeted from last year’s totals and even more from 2004. There have been an endless number of tactics used to try and sell properties, such as buy-down incentives, offering to pay closing costs or first year of the mortgage. While some of these incentives are generating a few sales, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) apparently thinks that a few sales aren’t good enough.

So the big boys are entering the selling game and the NAR is the biggest of them all. The November 3, 2006 article, “Realtors’ ad campaign says time is right to buy, sell,” which is posted on Inman News, expresses the industry’s overall effort to create more home sales.

If the market was supposed to correct itself for a year or two, adjusting form the overly inflated sales and home prices resulting from the booming period from 2000 to 2005, no one alerted the NAR, because they are determined to get the market rolling again.

“The National Association of Realtors trade group is paying for advertisements in six major U.S. newspapers to promote home purchases and sales, the association announced today.”

“The ad campaign, launched by the trade group's leadership, carries the message, ‘It's a great time to buy or sell a home,’ and notes that interest rates have fallen for seven months in a row and are near 40-year lows, while for-sale home inventories are ‘higher than they have been in decades and prices have stabilized,’ the association announced today.”

September 2006 existing home sales declined 14.2 percent from last September’s sales, which was also the sixth consecutive month that sales declined. Combine that with the fact that winter months are traditionally the slowest months in terms of sales, the housing market is looking at one of its worst years in recent memory.

The market is definitely in favor of the buyer. As of September, there was a 7. 3 month supply of available homes for sale (more than six months inventory constitutes a buyer’s market).

“And the U.S. median existing-home price dropped 2.2 percent to $220,000 in September compared to September 2005.”

So if everything is favoring buyers, why aren’t they purchasing properties? The common reasoning is that they are waiting for prices to drop even further.

“The Realtor group's advertisement appears today in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, and will appear Sunday in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, the association announced. The ad will appear in the same newspapers again during the Nov. 12 weekend.”

The advertisements constantly use selling catch phrases to imbed that it is a good time to buy.
“‘Prices overall have stabilized;’ ‘large inventory won't last;’ ‘positive outlook;’ ‘real estate is a great investment;’ and ‘don't delay’ are among the messages in the ad.”

The NAR is going full-throttle with these ads, as they are not limiting themselves just to print.

“Thomas M. Stevens, NAR president and senior vice president of Realogy Corp.'s NRT Inc., said that two new television and radio ads directed at home buyers and sellers will begin airing in January. Those ads are a part of the association's $40 million public awareness campaign.”

The NAR is hoping that these ads have a short life span as sales increase, the buyer’s market will wane. But for now, buyers are in the market’s driver’s seat.

What is amazing is that many industry experts are still denying that a buyer’s market even exists.

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