Vegas, Baby! Vegas!

Vaughn: They're gonna give daddy the Rainman suite, you dig that?
Favreau: Do you think we'll get there by midnight?
Vaughn: Baby, we're going to be up five hundy by midnight!
Favreau: Yeeeeaaaaahhhhhh!
Vaughn: Vegas baby! Vegas!
Favreau: Vegas!

There’s a scene from the movie Swingers where Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn decide impulsively to drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas for… well… all the things people do in Vegas.

While their excitement waxes as the lights of LA dim in their rear view mirror, their enthusiasm wanes during the course of their drive. Their anticlimactic Vegas trip culminates with a dejected Favreau and Vaughn at a $5 blackjack table surrounded by a number of blue-haired old women and other less-than-glamorous characters.

And so was my recent trip to Vegas for the NAR Region XI Conference…

Before I lapse into that, my last entry spent some time covering the proposed legislation facing our industry. In summary:

- The Designated Agency bill passed and will take effect July 1, 2009. A redline of the new Designated Agency Bill can be downloaded from http://www.wyorealtors.com/docs/Agency_bill_121208.doc

- The Statement of Consideration and Notary bills both died on the vine.

The NAR Region XI Conference, which drew Realtors to Vegas from Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and the great state of Wyoming, was a 48-hour junket that featured a series of speakers – including NAR economist Lawrence Yun and NAR Lead Counsel Laurie Janik – who spoke on a number of current real estate issues.

My account of the NAR Conference needs to colored in the right light; I flew to Vegas a few days early for some R&R in the poker rooms on the Strip. And after a couple of days of the cards not falling my way, I was beginning to feel like our heroes from Swingers treading water at a cheap blackjack table.

But after punching the clock as TBOR’s representative and checking into the Region XI Conference, it quickly became apparent the challenges of the Jackson Hole market are not unique. In contrast, many of the attendees at the NAR National Conference in Orlando in November were still clinging to the belief that a positive attitude would cure just about any challenge. Candidly, it was nice to see reality had set into the minds of those in attendance last week, even if the reality of the situation was somewhat bleak.

One Realtor from SLC shared that their market transaction volume for January was the lowest it has been in 12 years. Another Realtor from Reno was encouraged that pricing had hit 2002 levels and appeared to be tipping upward.

Realtors from the Vegas market, which seems to take more than its fair share of heat from the national media, were happy to report they were turning deals. The majority of those deals, however, were distressed properties in one form or another. In chatting it up with fellow gamblers or cabbies, I collected a couple of anecdotes of neighbors who vacated their homes under the cover of darkness to avoid the embarrassment of being evicted. Another story featured a perplexed condo owner whose mortgage was $320,000 and the adjacent unit was an REO on the market for $200,000.

As usual, it quickly became apparent that despite our challenges in Jackson Hole, we still have it pretty damn good.

While some of the panel discussions at the conference focused on state-specific legal issues – some of which might impact Wyoming and/or Idaho at some point – the more pressing info came from NAR Economist Lawrence Yun and NAR Counsel Laurie Janik.

Like many of the current soothsayers of the financial markets, Yun has gotten beat up in the media for basically clinging to the premise there was no real estate bubble and things had bottomed out nationally in 2007/08. To his credit, he’s modified his stance. His presentation in Vegas addressed the potentially positive impact of the recent stimulus package.

In summary, Yun believes we’ll see a national up tick in the 3rd and 4th quarter of 2009, but whether that priming of the economic pump is enough to restart the engine remains unclear. Should things stall again, Yun said, we could be facing a political climate where the American public won’t have the stomach for yet another close-to-trillion-dollar rescue package, greatly reducing the options available to the federal government to right the ship.

In other news, Laurie Janik offered an update on the Department of Justice settlement and the new Virtual Office Website (VOW) rules and regs that all MLS Boards adopted in mid-February. On a personal level, I had some concerns about specific language in the VOW regs, but Janik helped clarify the intent of the settlement, which is basically to create an online real estate model that mimics the services a Realtor can provide in a brick and mortar office.

Another presentation showcased some improvements to Realtor.com, which NAR is still trying to leverage as the one-stop-shop for real estate info despite the growth of aggregators like Trulia, Zillow, Google Base and a slew of others. While can’t speak for the usage of Realtor.com in urban markets, it seems Realtor.com’s value is resort markets like Jackson Hole is not as strong as some other regional and national WWW sites.

Throw in a couple lunches and a dinner, and so went the Region XI Conference. Please contact me with any questions or if you’re looking for a cheap buffet on the Strip.

Vegas, baby. Vegas.