Economists. What are they good for?

The American economist Dean Baker has a nice article this week titled How Many Economists Does it Take to See a $8 Trillion Housing Bubble?

The answer to that question has to be many more economists than we have in the United States. Very few economists saw or understood the growth of the $8 trillion housing bubble whose collapse wrecked the economy. This involved a degree of inexcusable incompetence from the economists at the Treasury, the Fed and other regulatory institutions who had the responsibility for managing the economy and the financial system.

There really was nothing mysterious about the bubble. Nationwide house prices in the United States had just kept even with the overall rate of inflation for 100 years from the mid 1890s to the mid 1990s. Suddenly house prices began to hugely outpace the overall rate of inflation. By their peak in 2006 house prices had risen by more than 70 percent after adjusting for inflation. Remarkably, virtually no U.S. economists paid any attention to this extraordinary movement in the largest market in the world.

Had they bothered, they would have quickly seen that there was no plausible explanation for this jump in prices in either the supply or demand side of the market.

Does any of this sound familiar? To some of us it is equally baffling that having watched what has happened in the United States and many other countries, economists at Treasury, the RBA and all the Australian banks continue to tell us that there is nothing at all to worry about in Australia.

Maybe they're right. But wouldn't it be nice if they at least pointed out some of the risks? In any case, next time you read an economist's prediction in the newspaper, keep in mind that most of the time, at least when it comes to predictions about the future, the experts don't have a clue what they're talking about. And they are especially bad at predicting when things might go wrong. As James Montier of the fund manager GMO said recently:

Attempting to invest on the back of economic forecasts is an exercise in extreme folly, even in normal times. Economists are probably the one group who make astrologers look like professionals when it comes to telling the future. Even a cursory glance at Exhibit 4 (see below) reveals that economists are simply useless when it comes to forecasting. They have missed every recession in the last four decades! And it isn’t just growth that economists can’t forecast: it’s also inflation, bond yields, and pretty much everything else.

Source: GMO

Like any other profession, there are plenty of smart people in economics. So why are economists so incredibly useless when it comes to forecasting? As Dean Baker notes in the article above, if you were looking in the right place, it wasn't hard to see that there was a major housing bubble developing in the USA in the years of 2000 to 2007, but hardly anybody raised the alarm. Here are a few possible explanations that come to mind:

• Some events that impact the economy are impossible to predict; for example, the recent floods in Queensland or the 9/11 attacks. 
• In every single financial bubble in history, there has been an argument that "this time is different" -- from the Dutch tulip mania of the 1600s to the Japanese "miracle economy" of the 1980s to the recent US housing bubble. These arguments often sound plausible at the time, but are later shown to be rubbish. Even very smart economists get caught up in the euphoria.
• It's not easy being a contrarian. If you forecast doom, and get it wrong, you look like a fool. If you forecast a continuation of the status quo and get it wrong, well, at least you can take comfort in the fact that you got it wrong along with everyone else. If you forecast doom and get it right, you may not get that much thanks because some people will want to "shoot the messenger".
• The economists that are most prominent in the media (mostly from banks and real estate companies) are generally paid to be bullish in order to drum up business. Do you really think an economist at an Australian bank is ever going to forecast a crash in the housing market when their profits are so dependent on massive issuance of mortgage debt? (and if you think academic economists are completely free of conflicts of interest, go see Inside Job).

Now, I'm not sure if any of the above apply here, but recently Craig James of CommSec got a bit testy in response to the argument by some contrarians that Australian house prices might be a little overheated. (Delusional Economics wrote about this here).

"There hasn't been any evidence that there has been a housing bubble and none to suggest that one is likely," James says. "Some commentators make inaccurate and damaging comments about housing bubbles and affordability without facing consequences. While it may be an emotive story, inaccuracies can limit housing investment and prevent supply from adjusting to higher demand."

It might just be my imagination, but Mr James sounds a little defensive.

In any case, it's not easy going against the flow. David Rosenburg, a highly respected American economist who is now at the Canadian investment firm Gluskin Sheff, recently spoke about how lonely it was being one of the few pessimists during the market rally in 2003-2007, when he was chief economist at Merrill Lynch, whose corporate symbol was a bull.

I recall all too well that 2003-07 bear market rally — yes, that is what it was... It was a classic bear market rally, and did last five years. I was forever skeptical because what drove that bear market rally was phony wealth generated by a non-productive asset called housing alongside widespread financial engineering, which triggered a wave of artificial paper profits. I knew it would end in tears … sadly, I didn’t know exactly when. I was constantly defensive in my investment recommendations at the time and there was a huge price to be paid for being bearish when there is a bull on your business card, trust me on that one.

That's it for today. Next time, we'll take another look at China, the commodity price boom and Australian house prices. Just remember that I don't know what I'm talking about either...

Why foreclosure-gate matters

In my last post we took at look at Australia's latest investing fad: buying up foreclosed properties in US states like California, Nevada and Florida. We've already examined how anybody who thinks this is a good idea probably needs their head checked, but there is one additional risk that I didn't even mention: the risk of getting sued by the previous owner of a property that you've bought if he or she claims that they were wrongfully thrown out of their house.

On this front, a Massachusetts court delivered a very important decision last week that could have huge implications for the US housing market and mortgage securitization. From the NY Times:

The highest court in Massachusetts ruled Friday that U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo erred when they seized two troubled borrowers’ properties in 2007, putting the nation’s banks on notice that foreclosures cannot be based on improper or incomplete paperwork. Concluding that neither institution had proved it had the right to evict the borrowers, the Supreme Judicial Court voided the foreclosures, returning ownership of the properties to the borrowers and opening the door to other foreclosure do-overs in the state.

To explain why this is important, we have to go right back to the root of the global financial crisis of 2008, which can be found in the securitization of US subprime mortgages.

During the boom years leading up to 2008, American banks packed together millions of mortgage loans, and sliced and diced, or "securitized" these into thousands of securities called MBS. To create an MBS, the banks would first sell the loans to a trust, which then sold bonds backed by those mortgages to investors all over the world. But there was a minor problem. In their rush to issue as many of these securities as possible and pay themselves gargantuan bonuses, the bankers didn't bother to do the paperwork properly, and now it's unclear who actually holds the mortgage notes. Oops. 

Of course, at the time these loans were made nobody ever thought this would be a problem because, as we know well in Australia, house prices double every 7 years and borrowers never default on their mortgages. Now, a few years later, there are millions of Americans delinquent on their loans.

"Foreclosure-gate" started brewing late last year when it became evident that having stuffed up the paperwork, many of the banks had hired thousands of "robo-signers" to write false affadavits claiming that they had reviewed the loan documents (which they hadn't even seen). These affadavits were then being used to evict people who had stopped paying their mortgages. 

So, the court case above puts an end to this kind of nonsense from the banks, at least in Massachussets. Until they get their paperwork in order (if that is even possible) they will have to stop turfing people out of their homes. The real estate experts cited here here say that this delay in the processing of foreclosures would be a good thing for the housing market.

If the slowdown continued through this month and into the spring, it could be a boost for the economy. Reducing foreclosures in a meaningful way would act to stabilize the housing market, real estate experts say, letting the administration patch up one of the economy’s most persistently troubled sectors. Fewer foreclosures means that buyers pay more for the ones that do come to market, which strengthens overall home prices and builds consumer confidence in housing. 

This is the optimistic view. If it becomes harder for lenders to foreclose, then they might become more willing to restructure loans instead (for example cutting the interest rate on the loan and/or reducing the principal that has to be repaid), which is probably the only eventual way out of this mess. At the end of the day, the banks are going to have to take a hit for making stupid loans that were never likely to be repaid.

But loan restructurings are tricky, because if the lenders offer attractive loan modification terms to delinquent borrowers, then even people who are able to pay their mortgage will start "strategically" defaulting in order to become eligible for debt forgiveness. And this would probably make some lenders insolvent. On top of this, securitization makes the whole process even more complicated because there are so many parties involved. In an MBS deal, there are strict contractual limits on loan modifications, which usually can't be changed without the consent of 100% of the MBS holders, who could number in the thousands and are usually spread all over the world. Obviously getting all these parties to agree is pretty much impossible.

In the meantime,  there could be enormous potential for chaos, because the Massachusetts legal decision is going to be followed by waves of lawsuits in other states all over America. Felix Salmon of Reuters has a great post addressing this issue which I will quote at length from:

The legal craziness that this decision sets in motion is going to be huge, I’m sure. Anybody who was foreclosed on in Massachusetts should now be phoning up their lawyer and trying to find out if the foreclosure was illegal. If it was — if there was a break in the chain of title somewhere which meant that the bank didn’t own the mortgage in question — then the borrower should be able to get their deed, and their home, back from the bank. This decision is retroactive, and no one has a clue how many thousands of foreclosures it might cover.

Similarly, if you bought a Massachusetts home out of foreclosure, you should be very worried. You might not have proper title to your home, and you risk losing it to the original owner. It might be worth dusting off your title insurance: you could need it. And if you ever need to sell your home, well, good luck with that.

Going forwards, every homeowner being foreclosed upon will as a matter of course challenge the banks to prove that they own the mortgage in question. If the bank can’t do that, then the foreclosure proceeding will be tossed out of court. This is likely to slow down foreclosures enormously, as banks ensure that all their legal ducks are in a row before they try to foreclose.

What’s more, courts in the other 49 states are likely to lean heavily on this decision when similar cases come before them. The precedent applies only in Massachusetts for now, but it’s likely to spread, like some kind of bank-eating cancer.

If a similar decision comes down in California, which is a non-recourse state, the resulting chaos could be massive. People who are current on their mortgage and perfectly capable of paying it could simply make the strategic decision to default, if and when they find out or suspect that the chain of title is broken somewhere. They would take a ding to their credit rating, but millions of people will happily accept a lower credit rating if they get a free house as part of the bargain.

The big losers here are the banks — of course — as well as investors in mortgage-backed securities, including of course Fannie and Freddie, a/k/a the US taxpayer.

 This could get very ugly.

On Australians buying US property...

With Australian property prices looking very toppy and the Aussie dollar going through the roof, the latest delusional investing fad in Australia appears to be snapping up foreclosed US properties. I've been hearing stories about this a while now, so I thought I'd look into it a bit. Firstly, in case you missed the story in The Age last week, here's a little extract to set the scene:

AUSTRALIAN property investors risk losing hundreds of millions of dollars after snapping up thousands of US housing bargains at forced-sale prices, experts have warned.
Emboldened by the soaring local dollar, Australians invested about $600 million on US residential property last year, according to the Washington-based National Association of Realtors, as overseas buying of US housing doubled.

But consumer advocate Neil Jenman predicts that thousands of Australians will lose their money after unwittingly buying undesirable property.
''It's going to be a calamity, for sure and certain,'' he says.

Another article from The Age tells the story of the following couple:

CLEANERS Ana and Miguel Canepa never imagined when they fled to Australia as refugees they would one day be landlords of four rental homes. But the residents of St Albans in Melbourne's outer north west are living the Australian dream, having last week signed contracts to buy their latest investment property. And it only cost them $A44,117.

That is because the three-bedroom house is in the US city of Phoenix in Arizona.
The couple, originally from El Salvador, have never been to Phoenix. But they already own two other homes purchased there this year for $A41,000 and $A52,100, as well as a fourth rental asset in Melbourne.

Real estate specialist Kevin Walters, who arranged the Canepa's purchases, will next month lead a shopping tour for 10 Australians and a tax firm that advises self- managed superannuation holders. They will visit Phoenix and Las Vegas, the foreclosure capital of the US.

''You can buy a house in the US for the cost of a deposit here,'' he says. ''Clients can purchase property in just two days, it's that easy. The only exception is that we don't have a lender for them at the moment, so they buy in cash.'' Mr Thomas says he gets rental returns of 16 per cent on his US assets, compared to about 3 per cent for his Australian properties. ''It doesn't seem a risk at all to me,'' he says.

What could possibly go wrong?

The Age quotes a Byron-Bay based buyers agent called 888 US Real Estate, which according to its website charges a "committment fee" of $380 and then a commission of $3,420 for each property purchase it handles for the Aussie battlers trying to realise their dreams. But 888 US Real Estate is just one of a handful of organizations that are sprouting up like weeds to flog US property to unsuspecting Australian buyers. Here are just a few of the ridiculous sales pitches made on some of these websites.

• "It's no secret: USA property investment gives you a 10-20% net return... Even after your expenses are paid you will still make money with My USA Property"
• "Once American banks start lending again, the USA market will recover. So you’d be wise to invest in an undervalued market now since every Australian dollar buys more"  (My USA Property)
• "When you say “Go!” you set the wheels in motion for an exhilarating ride as your property grows in value giving you the possibility to create enough cash to fund the rest of your life in a few short years. Call us now!" (888 USA Real Estate)

Now, before you leave to throw up, I'd like to note that the statements above would be illegal if these guys were stockbrokers. But apparently in property land it's OK to promise fantastical rates of return without pointing out any of the risks involved in the investment strategy. Speaking of the risks, we'll get to that later.

But for now, we should concede that some of the claims they make are accurate. It is indeed true that in many parts of the US today, you can buy a house for less than the price of a new car in Australia, or for less than the average deposit on a house in most Australian cities. Which raises another question. There are a lot of very smart American investors with a lot of money to burn. If properties in the US are such a bargain, why is it that many of these American investors still don't want to touch the property market with a ten foot pole?

Miami Vice
I'm not going to go into detail about what an absolute debacle the US property market is today, but let's just take a look at an interesting graphic in a recent report from the ratings agency Moodys. Moody's notes that there is still a massive surplus of housing inventory on the market, and that foreclosures and defaults are still skyrocketing in many parts of the country. You can see below that there are significant parts of California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida, where Moody's doesn't expect the housing market to fully recover until 2030. Yes, that's still two decades away.

And guess where the property spruikers are trying to talk Australians into buying investment properties? You're right. Places like California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida. Here's are a couple of listings in Florida from My USA Property:

Now, on the surface, property prices in Florida look like a real bargain, since they've already fallen around 45% in Miami and more than 40% in Tampa, as you can see below.

Source: www.data360.org

Unsuspecting Suckers
But there's no guarantee that prices are ever going to return to these peaks again, at least for a very long time in some of these areas. In fact, one recent study (which I might examine in more detail when I get the chance) argues that the housing bust may have created new types of "declining cities" across the USA -- certain cities which grew rapidly in the boom, attracting huge population inflows and investment -- but which are now facing the prospect of decades of stagnation thanks to a vicious circle of falling house prices, declining populations, rising vacancies, and increasing crime rates.

Some Australian investors are already finding this out the hard way. From the above story in The Age:

Sydney woman Kathy Graffiti bought three properties in upstate New York in 2005 and estimates she has lost between $300,000 and $400,000 on her investment. She bought two properties in Rochester and one in Buffalo for a total of $250,000, expecting rental yields of between 22-23 per cent.
The rental income stopped in 2007 and Ms Graffiti was forced to sell two of the properties at a significant loss. She has been offered $10,000 for the third property. 

According to Neil Jenman, the consumer advocate quoted in The Age above, Buffalo, NY is one of the many areas where American "flippers" are buying up properties at fire-sale prices and then selling them on to "unsuspecting Australian suckers" at much higher prices.

Typically, the American promoters work in tandem with Australian property spruikers who Jenman says are the "same rogues" who used highly questionable tactics when selling residential property on the Gold Coast and in the outer Melbourne suburbs.

Jenman says some Australians paid $50,000 for US houses with expectations of extraordinary rental yields and now can't sell the properties for $25,000. And he knows of an Australian who paid $80,000 for a house and now is unable to sell it for $40,000 – the best offer has been $10,000.

Dumb Things
Without a doubt, there are going to be some good investment opportunities in some parts of the US. But how the hell are you going to identify them from Australia, and can you really trust the clowns at places like 888 US Real Estate to pick the winners for you?

And that's not to mention the myriad of other problems involved with buying property in the US, which the property spruikers gloss over, but include:

• Significant foreign exchange risk
• Major tax complications including the necessity to pay income tax in the US on any rental income
• Stronger legal protections for tenants in the USA and a greater likelihood of lawsuits which can significantly raise costs for landlords compared to in Australia (see here for example)

Finally, you may have wondered how Australian investors have been financing these purchases. The answer is that American banks generally refuse to grant loans to overseas property investors (they're having enough trouble dealing with all the dumb subprime loans they made to Americans), so the majority of purchases are being made in cash. And where is this cash coming from? Usually, one of two things. Either a line of credit based on the equity in their Australian property holdings, or cash from their self managed super funds. Does this sound like a smart idea to you?

It's time to wrap this up. Let's end with an appropriate Aussie classic from Paul Kelly.

An investment property for the new year?

Some of you may remember that I was a bit harsh on our friends at Australian Property Investor in this recent post. I was planning to go easy on them for a while, but I just happened to come across their new issue online and it's so compelling that I can't resist. According to API, 2011 is the year of "RED HOT BUYING OPPORTUNITIES". Yes, you too can become a millionare.

Now, unfortunately you need the print version to get the full details, which apparently includes the story of a 24 year old role model for all young Australians who has racked up $1 million in property debt, but is "still in front"! Anyway, for those of us that don't have a subscription they have a nice little piece online titled 7 Reasons to Buy an Investment Property Now. It's a Pulitzer worthy example of the property spruiking genre, so I will quote all 7 reasons below, sprinkled with a bit of commentary in between: 

1. It's a buyers' market - most buyers don't buy in a buyers' market; investors buy in a buyers' market, so we should call it an investors' market. So what should investors do? Get out there and buy.

My first question here is, what the hell does this mean? I'm not really sure what they're talking about, but I think they're trying to tell us to just drop whatever the hell we're doing and go out there and buy some investment properties right now before they all disappear.

2. Prices for some materials are dropping so now is the best time to do some renovations or building.

What materials? Don't they say below that commodity prices are going up?

3. There's the emergence of a major commodity demand coming out of China and India. The Reserve Bank is forecasting a resources boom, so investors need to get ready for that.

The commodity boom is a double edged sword for Australia, as I argued here. If the boom continues, the RBA is probably going to keep raising interest rates, and the banks will follow by lifting mortgage rates. At the very least, this would reduce the returns on rental properties (which are already negative without capital gains). At the worst, higher rates will choke the rest of the economy and trigger a crash. On the other hand, if the bears are right about China and the boom busts, our economy is in big trouble.

So yes, API is right that "investors need to get ready for that". They need to get ready by not making dumb financial decisions that leave them overburdened with debt when things go bad. Dumb decisions like collectively buying $600 million of residential US property over the past year without a proper understanding of the risks involved, for example. (In case you're wondering, API has that covered too)

4. There's going to be an influx of workers, who will need somewhere to live and they'll most likely be renting properties.

5. A rental boom is just around the corner - as those workers come in there'll be increased demand for property and with a shortage of houses already rents are sure to increase.

Where is this influx of workers going to come from? Immigration is falling from its peak levels of earlier this decade and international student numbers are falling sharply. See the chart below.

Source: RP Data

6. Other markets - such as the sharemarket - are volatile but property is stable.

This is one of the biggest myths surrounding property investing. While it's true that property has historically been less volatile than shares, it's a different story if you're highly leveraged, which is the case for virtually everybody buying property. If you buy $50,000 of BHP Billiton shares with cash and the market falls 20%, you lose $10,000, or 20% of your investment. Bad news, but not a total disaster.

On the other hand, lets say you put this money in a $500,000 investment property. You put $50,000 down and borrow the rest at an LTV of 90%. In this case, if the market drops 20%, you have not only lost your entire investment, but you owe MORE money to the bank than the property is even worth. Negative equity. Another point to make is that unlike shares, property is highly illiquid. If you do need to offload that investment property in a hurry, it's quite possible there won't be any buyers.

Highly leveraged investments are great when markets are going up, which is what we've seen in Australia for most of the past two decades. They make a lot of ordinary people look very smart. But they also contain the potential for financial disaster when things go wrong, as we have seen recently in the USA, Iceland, Ireland and Spain. And just how leveraged is the average property investor in Australia? Very. According to Westpac around half of investor loans in Australia are interest only, meaning that they haven't even paid down any of the principal and are basically gambling on capital gains.

7. Growth in prices is coming - the cycle will soon turn. There'll be a rental boom and a shortage of housing will drive up prices. Investors should be getting ready for the next capital gain boom. Don't miss the boat.

So don't miss the boat. There's a massive capital boom coming because... well, you know, it's just "the vibe".

That's enough about the property spruikers for now, because there are more interesting things that I'd rather write about. But there's a serious point behind making fun of these guys, which is that Australians are getting a lot of very bad advice on property investing -- the risks involved are rarely properly explained. On a related note I would like to draw your attention to an interesting post by Delusional Economics earlier this week. Citing a particularly egregious example of property spruiking in the Herald Sun, they ask the excellent question of whether or not advice on property investment is subject to regulation by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

Well, apparently not, according to this comment posted by Delusional Economics reader PETER_W.

The Real Estate industry is exempt from the Financial Services Reforms (Financial Advice) Act... The real estate industry lobbied very hard to ensure the dumbest of the very dumb... i.e. their own members the real estate agents were exempt from being licenced under the AFSL... Australian Financial Services Licencing Act. So long as their advice is only constrained to real estate they can tell the public that house prices will grow at 20% compound for the next 40 years with no legal constraints. 

Since a house is by far the most important investment most people make, shouldn't there be some sort of regulation here?

The lunacy of US health care

A quick departure from the usual themes of this blog today, as I have an interesting anecdote illustrating the financial folly of the US healthcare system. A couple of months ago I went to see a doctor in Manhattan about a minor skin problem. She spent about 10 seconds examining me, immediately identified the problem, wrote me an illegible prescription, and sent me packing. At the most I was in her office for 2 minutes.

Two months later I get a strange letter in the mail from the clinic, telling me that my insurance company is refusing to pay them the $160 they charged me for that 2 minute appointment. Here is what it says.

To date, we have been unable to secure payment for the services rendered to you. We appreciate any assistance you can provide, including calling your insurance company, to help get these claims paid. We appreciate your assistance in resolving your outstanding insurance balance.

This is a perfect illustration of how completely nuts the US healthcare system is. Firstly, $160 for a two minute office visit. Enough said.

Secondly, it appears to be routine business practice of a lot of the health insurers here to deny a certain percentage of claims, whether or not they have a genuine reason for doing so. Patients are then forced into an endless bureaucratic nightmare of paperwork, fine print and phone calls and have to waste hours negotiating with their insurance provider to get them to pay the bill. Some people just give up eventually and end up paying the bill themselves, which is probably what the insurance company was hoping for in the first place. There appears to be no government regulation to put a stop to this kind of stupidity.

Now, my example is nothing more than an annoyance. But there are legions of stories here of cancer victims, etc, being denied coverage for totally arbitrary reasons and then being stuck with enormous bills for services which they thought they were covered for. If you think I'm exaggerating, see here for some heartbreaking stories. In fact, the inability to pay medical bills is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States.

As the entertaining Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone puts it:

The system doesn't work for anyone. It cheats patients and leaves them to die, denies insurance to 47 million Americans, forces hospitals to spend billions haggling over claims, and systematically bleeds and harasses doctors with the specter of catastrophic litigation.

There are currently more than 1,300 private insurers in this country, forcing doctors to fill out different forms and follow different reimbursement procedures for each and every one. This drowns medical facilities in idiotic paperwork and jacks up prices: Nearly a third of all health care costs in America are associated with wasteful administration. Fully $350 billion a year could be saved on paperwork alone if the U.S. went to a single-payer system...

President Obama passed a modest reform package last year that attempts to deal with some of these issues, but would still fall well short of the kind of comprehensive health care systems that most other western countries have in place. For this, he has been derided as a "socialist" and a "nazi" by the crazed tea party types currently gaining prominence in the Republican party, who assert that health care is "not a right, it's a privilege".

Anyway, my rant on US health care is over.

Happy new year to everybody reading. If you're new, the aim of this blog is to debate some of the big issues facing Australia's economy today, many of which are getting very short thrift in the Australian media.

To date, I have focused largely on what I think is the biggest vulnerability we face today: the huge rise in Australian property prices over the past decade and the unsustainable growth in household debt that has accompanied it. I will probably continue to go on about this like a broken record, because it is the single issue where I think mainstream Australian opinion (reflected in the media) is the most utterly divorced from reality. But I would also like to broaden the themes of this blog a bit this year.

Some interesting topics that I will probably explore:

• Is China's boom and the massive rise in commodity prices sustainable? 
• Is it sensible to tax the miners with a resources tax?
• Are we going to see sovereign defaults in Europe? And what would trouble in the international debt markets mean for Australia's banks and our property market?
• Why were the Henry review's recommendations on property taxes completely ignored?
• How overvalued is the Australian dollar?
• What is going on inside the head of Brendan Fevola?

Feel free to suggest related topics or weigh in with your own opinion in the comments section below the posts. Time permitting (I do have a full time job!), I will try to reply. I don't expect everybody to agree with me. If you work in real estate, you will probably think I'm an idiot. That's fine. In my opinion, the mark of a good blog is the quality of the comments section.

Until next time.