Towards Reforming Housing Market Research at PCBC 2011

For this year's PCBC in San Francisco, I'll be participating on two different panels discussing how and why traditional housing market research during the boom years (including consultants who were all too willing to write fiction to keep builder & developer clients happy) failed to fully recognize the financial cataclysm that was to come. Here's a description of the panel, which will take place over two days but focus on different issues:

The building industry largely missed the signs of the housing bubble, ignored its profound consequences, and adjusted too late. What went wrong? How can it be fixed? And, going forward, how can we develop a more objective and comprehensive framework of market-based due diligence? A panel of prominent economists, housing consultants, financial bloggers and market research data experts will discuss necessary reforms, the current outlook, and new tools to get a better handle about where the market is going.

I plan on turning off my censor completely for this opportunity, because by engaging in such deceptive practices, industry consultants not only tanked the housing market, but also played a minor role in destabilizing the global economy. Today, I still see those same consultants working within the industry, yet no one seems to care about the danger of history being repeated (hint: these guilty parties aren't going to warn you about their previous behavior in their marketing materials). If you choose a consultant who lies to you to get your business and then your project fails, guess who's to blame? YOU ARE!

If you're planning to attend PCBC, please join me and the following panel for what I'm sure will be a provocative discussion:

Moderator: Gerd-Ulf Krueger, Principal Economist, HousingEcon.com
Patrick Duffy, Principal, Metrointelligence
Rick Sharga, Senior Vice President, RealtyTrac, Inc.
Belinda Sward, Executive Managing Director, Strategic Solutions Alliance
Alexander Villacorta, Senior Statistician, Clear Capital

Click here to register for PCBC (prices go up after May 10th).