When Robert Shiller, co-creator of the SP/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices , speaks, he tends to make headlines, and yesterday was no different.

Claiming that he wasn’t making any predictions, he predicted that home prices could fall another 25 percent.

“That wouldn’t surprise me at all,” he hedged. And there was the headline, tragic as it is.

I happened to be at the conference yesterday where he said that. In fact, I was a speaker/panelist at the Standard and Poors “Housing Summit 2011: Boom, Bust and Beyond.” And, no offense, but that wasn’t the headline. What really struck me was what he said right before that.

“Statisticians deal with things that repeat themselves. This housing boom and bust is so historic and unprecedented, you can’t forecast the future because you have no comparison.”

That was not only the headline, but the theme of the conference, as I sat on a panel with economists from SP, Experian and Columbia Business School. Chip Case was there as well, disagreeing with Shiller on several points.

Audience members, largely from the finance industry, kept asking the same question in different ways, ‘When is this all going to get better??’

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Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/43354956?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS

When Robert Shiller, co-creator of the SP/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices , speaks, he tends to make headlines, and yesterday was no different.

Claiming that he wasn’t making any predictions, he predicted that home prices could fall another 25 percent.

“That wouldn’t surprise me at all,” he hedged. And there was the headline, tragic as it is.

I happened to be at the conference yesterday where he said that. In fact, I was a speaker/panelist at the Standard and Poors “Housing Summit 2011: Boom, Bust and Beyond.” And, no offense, but that wasn’t the headline. What really struck me was what he said right before that.

“Statisticians deal with things that repeat themselves. This housing boom and bust is so historic and unprecedented, you can’t forecast the future because you have no comparison.”

That was not only the headline, but the theme of the conference, as I sat on a panel with economists from SP, Experian and Columbia Business School. Chip Case was there as well, disagreeing with Shiller on several points.

Audience members, largely from the finance industry, kept asking the same question in different ways, ‘When is this all going to get better??’

Page 1 of 3 | Next Page
Show Entire Article

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Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/43354956?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS

The East Bay Tea Party, based in Alamo, has taken an interest in the regional planning effort, which seeks to curb suburban sprawl, car use and pollution by encouraging housing to be built near mass-transit hubs or job centers.

The work is the result of state legislation that requires regions to devise development and transportation plans to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

The Tea Party has become a national force, but its message of small government and lower taxes has made few inroads in the liberal Bay Area. Heather Gass, a Danville real estate agent, has been leading the charge for the East Bay Tea Party in the planning debate.

In a blog post, Ms. Gass takes the position that the Sustainable Communities Strategy is biased against people who want to raise their children in the suburbs and drive cars. She wrote that the plan portended a future of “working at your government-assigned job on the bottom floor of your urban transit center village because you have no car and who knows where your aging parents will be but by then it will be too late!”

On Tuesday, Ms. Gass and about a dozen others attended an Oakland meeting of the two planning agencies intended to get suggestions from the public. They peppered the urban planners with questions and comments.

When planners asked audience members to rank the importance of open space like parks, Ms. Gass exploded. “Open space also includes people’s private property,” she said. “You cannot ask people to vote on something that violates others’ private property.”

Lou Hexter, who was leading the exercise, tried to placate her, saying quietly, “It’s good to hear everyone’s opinion, but we need to ——.”

“Back off!” Ms. Gass yelled.

At one point, the host felt the need to ask everyone to take a “time out.”

Miriam Chion, a planner with the Bay Area governments group, said that no one was going to be removed from their home in the suburbs. “The sustainable-communities strategy is not about moving people,” she said. “It’s about addressing development challenges.”

Even with the group of vocal critics, when the audience voted on priorities for the Bay Area, the top five were: daily needs close to home, clean air, convenient access to jobs, water conservation and lower carbon emissions. “Large homes with big yards” was near the bottom.

zelinson@baycitizen.org

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/us/27bcteaparty.html