Happy Thanksgiving!

Long before high-rise flashy condo's, flips, and those insane no-doc-loans we use to celebrate Thanksgiving with dignity, simplicity and true meaning.

I know that this hasn't been a good year for most in the real estate business or industry.

But when we threw away the old fashion, hard-won, tried and true rule book and decided to "fly-by-greed" alone, the crash was all but inevitable.

The business as we came to see it and know it for the past few decades is over, done and cooked and forever gone.

The financial harm, economic pain and emotional headache created to countless millions is going to continue and linger for some time.

We can't simply market or talk our way out of this most serious real estate crisis.

The good news is that maybe it has given to the real estate industry and business something that has long been absent and that is: humility.

I, for one, see many changes coming down the pike. I see new massive rules and new regulations to replace our lost sense of collective ethics and self policing; I see the end of the film-flam "flipsters, not by desire, or ideals but by legal mandate.

I sense that the down payment requirements on all real estate will soar. Credit reporting will become tighter and tighter. Values will continue to erode and sink.

The yahoo-huckster, big-business "brand-machines" will continue to peddle false-hope and falser promises and they will begin to flop. The larger than life national organizations will lose massive membership and they too shall begin to fade into oblivion.

So the good news is that a new day will be coming for the real estate industry and business and for this we can be most thankful.

Even if it does take another five or six years we have a great deal to be thankful for and with diginity, simplicity and true meaning.



Bill McInerney