Monday, October 23, 2006

Yeah... no duh!!

MOST U.S. HOME MARKETS are in bear mode as anxious sellers growl and buyers are scarce. All of the leading indicators now painfully confirm that.

To all the existing indexes, I'd like to add one more: The Donald Trump Index. This is mostly a psychological measure based on the popularity and price of real-estate-oriented "wealth-building" seminars headlined by the property mogul and TV star.

Last year, when the home market peaked, the Real Estate Wealth Expo, featuring Trump and 70 other money mavens such as Suze Orman, charged as much as $499 per person and attracted more than 60,000 participants, according to the Learning Annex, the New York City-based education company that sponsors the shows.

Recent ads for the event offered a price as low as $99 for similar seminars that are scheduled in cities such as New York, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles and Toronto. Is there any connection between the 80 percent drop in the Trump Index and the measurable decline in the market?


Everything is plenty peachy when the market is on the way up, even the profit margins. Read the rest here.

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