[070321stb1130]{.underline}

Bill Sittig:

Welcome to today's program, featuring Mark Nash. I'm Bill Sittig, chief
of the Library's \[of Congress\] Science, Technology and Business
Division, and this event is one in our series in which we learn from
important writers, thinkers and practitioners in the various fields of
science, technology, business and economics.

Before I introduce today's speaker, I'd like to mention a few of our
upcoming programs. On April 3, Dr. Wayne Esaias, a biological
oceanographer with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center will speak on
"Honeybees, Satellites and Climate Change." On April 18,\[coughs\]
excuse me, Dr. Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition and public health
at New York University will speak on her recent books, including "Food
Politics and Safe Food." On May 23, Jim Crawford, a farmer from central
Pennsylvania, is going to speak on organic farming and organic foods.
And in early June, Jane MacLeish, a noted local landscape designer is
going to speak to us on urban landscapes and gardens. I hope that you
will be able to attend all or some of these programs.

For some of you standing by the door, there are some empty seats over
here. Please, before we start the program, if you'd like to move over
there -- thank you. I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank
Carolyn Larson for suggesting today's speaker, and Ellen Terrell and Bob
Jackson of our business reference staff for all their good work in
preparing for today's program. Ellen has prepared a short list of print
and Internet resources on home buying and selling, which you're free to
take away with you. And both Ellen and Bob have gathered some books from
our collections, which are on the table on the side here, for you to
look at following today's program.

It's now my great pleasure to introduce Mark Nash, a residential real
estate agent for the past 10 years; a broker, author and a syndicated
columnist. Mark is currently a broker associate with Coldwell Banker
Residential Brokerage in the Chicago area. He was previously affiliated
with Prudential Homes Marketing Program for upper income properties, and
was a member of that company's prestigious president's circle. Mark is
also a prolific writer. He is the author of five real estate books:
"Fundamentals of Marketing for Real Estate Professionals, Starting and
Succeeding in Real Estate," "Reaching Out: The Financial Power of Niche
Marketing," his new "Real Estate: A to Z for Buying and Selling a Home,"
and "1001 Tips for Buying and Selling a Home" which is on sale here
today. Mark has kindly agreed to stay for a short while after the
program to sign the copies, which you can buy right outside the room.
Mark has written over a hundred articles on real estate and other
subjects.

Just glancing through his articles, a couple that caught my eye are one
he wrote on Valentine's Day in which he warns home buyers to save money
once they find the perfect home; to play it coy, adopt a poker face
around listing, around listing agents and sellers, and by all means
avoid phrases around the sellers such as, "We just fell in love with
this house."

\[laughter\]

"It's the perfect house for us," and "We love it," "We want it."

In another piece in which he gave his residential real estate forecast
for 2007, he predicts that Florida, Arizona, California and Washington,
D.C., will have unstable markets in 2007. Until sellers get a reality
oriented wake-up call, markets in these localities will sputter and
hiccough. Mark is in demand as a real estate analyst, having appeared on
Bloomberg Television, "CBS News," CNN, "The Today Show," among others,
and has written pieces for the "Washington Post," "The Midwest Review of
Books" and the "New York Times."

I don't have to tell you much more about Mark; his clients have said it
all: "Mark was very direct, clear and followed through with everything
we wanted. We always felt he had our best interests in mind. I now have
made several moves in my career with the company, and Mark has been the
best person we worked with." Roy. "We\'re still loving our house, but we
think of you often as we mull over our real estate needs in the future.
When we\'re ready, you\'ll be our first call." Pat and Mike. "Mark,
thank you for being there for us. Your professional services were
priceless. We owe you so much for keeping us sane." Rick and Steve. And
last, "Thanks for everything. Love ya." Ann.

With these pip testimonials, what more can I say? Mark Nash.

\[laughter\]

\[applause\]

Mark Nash:

Thank you, Bill. It\'s very much an honor to be invited to speak here in
Washington, D.C., at the Library of Congress. And I was going to do a
little bit of my bio following, but I think that you\'ve done \-- oops.
Yeah, I need to go back. Oh, okay. I am an author of five real estate
books. I am a columnist for "REALTYTIMES™.com," which is syndicated in
many other periodicals around the country. I also write for a couple
trade publications, including "Real Estate Executive" magazine. And the
editor, Judy Tibbs, is here today. I appear on television quite often;
I\'m going to be on CBS, "The Early Show" in a couple of weeks, talking
about buzzwords and abbreviations that realty agents use, and that
consumers can \-- help them figure out how to decipher our language,
which sometimes is a code to a lot of people.

But I want to get into the first pieces; real estate\'s really about
people, and not about houses. I think a lot of people think it is about
the house. But I know in transactions that I work with every day, it\'s
the personalities interacting which create the anxiety or pleasure or
emotions from both the buyers and the sellers. And a lot of times I\'ll
go to a client\'s home \-- and Jason was a really good example of a
client where, you know, it was the person who controlled the house. And
needless to say, he wasn\'t very tidy. And he was being corporately
relocated to another community out of the Chicago market, and I said to
him, "Jason, you\'ve got to clean this place up. We can\'t even start to
show it until you get your act together here at home." And I said,
"Here\'s my book. Read the chapter on it, and I\'ll come back in a
couple of weeks." And he said, "Okay, Mark. I thought it was clean. I
cleaned it up before you came today."

\[laughter\]

And I said, "It\'s not clean enough." And so I came back in a couple of
weeks, and he really had done a really good job. And he's very proud of
it, and he goes, "I have it all figured out. I have my whole survival
kit that I\'m going to use while you\'re marketing the house." And I
said, "What is it?" because I\'d been looking around. I opened the
refrigerator; nothing in it. The bed was perfect. He said, "Come back in
the kitchen." And I went back in. He said, "Open the freezer door." And
it was all Lean Cuisine, from top to bottom. Then he said, "Come back in
the bedroom," and he pulls out this new sleeping bag with a pillow
rolled up. And he goes, "I\'m not even going to sleep in the bed."

\[laughter\]

So when people think it\'s about houses, I always think back to, really
it\'s about the personality.

Is home ownership for everyone? And I have to say no. And a lot of
people in the industry would probably say, "Oh, why did you say that?"
Well, it\'s not. There\'s a lot of reasons why some people \-- you know,
maybe they\'re transitioning, maybe they need to live in a city for a
short period of time for work or for medical reasons. So, you know, we
wish it was for everybody, but I have to say there are some people that
maybe shouldn\'t own a home today, or in the next year or in the next
five years. Sixty-eight percent of Americans own homes, and 12 million
Americans will buy or sell a home in 2007. And that\'s according to the
National Association of Realtors, who I also write some articles for.

Here are some tips for 2007. Everyone got in the frenzy which in
different markets went from different years. Chicago it was really '01,
'02, '03. I think in California it was '02, '04, '05, but most markets
in the country are transitioning. But all markets are not buyer\'s
markets. I think most markets are balanced. I don\'t think sellers are
really at the point where they\'re going to \-- they\'re going to cut
their price a little bit, but they\'re not going to make a major
correction. So, what we\'re seeing this year is the sellers needing to
get a new attitude about pricing. Pricing realistically in using sold
comparables just from the last six months, because in real estate
markets, the market really is just the last six months. Because
appraisers for home mortgage lenders, that's what they tell their
appraisers to use. So if you\'re going back to another market, it is
another market. And really, a current real estate market is just the
last six months. So that\'s what people need to focus on.

I think that we\'ve already seen an up tick of buyer activity in '07. A
lot of people stayed off the market in '06 because of the headlines they
saw right after the midterm elections in November. We saw buyers feel
like they had some confidence, and have returned back to the market, and
they are writing contracts. In '06 it was the bubble headlines which
scared buyers a long time in the market, then higher gasoline prices
also. People were trying to figure out, "What's our personal household
budget, and how is gasoline, mainly in commuting expenses, impacting
it?" And I think that shut people down, and then the run up to the
election also kept people on the sidelines.

So I think we should get into why shouldn\'t we compare real estate to
the stock market. And I think that a lot of people with headlines have
been trying to compare the two, and I think there are really some
fundamental differences between them. The stock market\'s a global
market today, where real estate is a U.S. market, and it\'s also
comprised of many micromarkets. If you think of Washington, D.C.,
there's single-family homes and there's condominiums. And then you get
into all these drilling down into different locations within the
markets. So every time someone wants to ask me, "Well, how's the U.S.
market?" And you can\'t say "It\'s X." There's probably 30,000 real
estate markets in the U.S., and there could be more than that. So I try
to stay away from making some generalization. Real estate is fixed to
the land. The stock market is not fixed. I mean, I\'ve never seen a P&E
report for a home. So I think you have to look at it differently, and
what drives the market. And each market is very unique and individual in
what drives it.

Housing and shelter; I think this year that deferred demand is what\'s
bringing those buyers back. People still want to buy a house and live in
a house. I don\'t think that we\'re seeing as much investment, investors
coming back to the market yet, but there are some really ripe
opportunities for people that want to invest in real estate. Some
markets have been kind of off on the sidelines; parts of Texas are very
attractive from a value proposition. I think one of the main differences
in real estate is that it's, we have oversight, but we are not regulated
as much as the stock market is. So that also creates some differences
between the two. I think, too, the zoning restrictions \-- you know, you
can split a stock, but you can\'t split a house. I think the whole
analogy of making the comparisons to the two is really not serving the
American public.

Let\'s see \-- I went through most of that. What should you do if
you\'re selling your home in 2007? As I said earlier, you have to price
it right. And I keep saying that and keep saying that, because sellers
still heard all the stories a couple of years ago, \[at\] cocktail
parties \[and\] around the water cooler: "Oh, I got a record price, I
got a record price." They did get a record price, but they got a record
price in a different market. And today\'s market is much different than
it was a couple of years ago. So price your home right.

A couple years ago in a seller\'s market, you didn\'t have to do
anything to your home. You just had to put it on the market, and the
buyers came. Sometimes you got multiple offers, and off you went. Today
it\'s about home marketing. You have to have the house updated and
clean, clean, clean, clean like my client, Jason. And you have to know
your competition. So go out to Sunday open houses and look at other
similar houses that are on the market that you\'re going to be competing
with. And you have to market your home on the Internet. Eighty percent
of all homebuyers use the Internet to start their search for a home,
according to the National Association of Realtors. And that comes from
their 2006 profile of home buyers and sellers.

So if your property isn\'t on the Internet, you\'re missing 80 percent
of the buyers that are looking. And they\'re looking. That\'s where
they\'re kind of getting an idea for what they want to do in the market,
and get a perception of what the values are. Some things that home
sellers shouldn't do in '07; forget about the incentives. Forget about
the flat screen TVs. There was a couple in Ohio last year that gave away
a used Jaguar.

\[laughter\]

Buyers really want the price to reflect the true market value. Don't
mark it up to put the freebies in. They don't like the mark it up to
mark it down, so stay away from that.

Home sellers have to, or should be open to accepting home sale
contingencies. A couple years ago we saw contracts that were relatively
what we call clean. But contingencies are back. If a buyer needs to sell
a property to buy yours, you really have to entertain that. And sorry,
but it is a different market, and those clean contracts we're seeing
less of. If you get a contract and there is a home sale contingency in
it, be grateful and recognize that. And limit open houses. I think last
year when the market was quiet, sellers kept saying to their agents, "We
want to be open, we want to be open, we want to be open." And buyers
were like, "Well, what's wrong, if they're open every week?" So, don't
have a public open house more than once every three weeks.

Home buyers in 2007: don't skip having a home inspection; in most
contracts it's one of your legal rights. I think that it's great to have
a third person in to take a look at your home, and to give you an
opinion of what the condition of it is. And don't have your Uncle Bert
in.

\[laughter\]

And carbon monoxide detectors; that's a big issue for me in '07. In
several states they're now required. Illinois is one of them, but I
think everyone should have a carbon monoxide detector \-- at least one
in their home. I think buyers should think about resale characteristics
when they're looking at homes. I think a lot of times you fall in love
with the home, but how marketable is the home when you want to get out?
According to the National Association of Realtors, buyers stay on the
average six years. So before you know it, you're going to be back on
market yourself.

Don't low-ball offers, especially if the home is priced right. I know a
lot of people think, "Oh, I can write anything." You can't write
anything. You can present anything, but if the home is priced right the
sellers have done their homework too.

Home online evaluation Web sites. I got a couple cubes on that one. You
know, technology is great, but the online home evaluation Web sites draw
from public records. So if you know there\'s a delay in how public
records like mortgages and deeds are recorded in your area where you\'re
thinking about buying, then it\'s not going to get fed into these Web
sites. So I hate to say it; the Multiple Listing Service is probably the
most accurate place to go, at this point in time, for recorded sale
price.

Consider the resale; we did that. Reserve funds for condo owners. A lot
of people are buying condominiums, homes in planned unit developments,
and you have to look at the condo docs and bylaws, the reserve funds;
how is the association managed, and how well is it managed? And a lot of
people overlook that. That\'s it. Does anybody have any questions? Yes.

Female Speaker:

\[Inaudible\].

Mark Nash:

Can associations go bankrupt? I\'ve never heard of it, but I think it\'s
a possibility. I think when you see low reserve funds, it shows
mismanagement probably for the last 10 years. It also could show that
they possibly had spent a lot of money on capital improvements like new
windows or new roofs or things like that. But you do want to look for
healthier reserve funds when you are buying, because if there\'s no
money in that bank account for the association, guess what, you\'re
going to have a special assessment to pay for any of those capital
improvements.

Male Speaker:

\[Inaudible\].

Mark Nash:

I think a lot of the markets have some instability. When I wrote that it
was in December, and I had looked at some figures, and that was my
recollection from that point in time. And that\'s getting back to, you
know, saying it's D.C. in general, X, and I can\'t. It really gets back
to the micromarkets within the D.C. market. I don\'t know what else to
say. Did I answer your question? Yes.

Female Speaker:

\[Inaudible\].

Mark Nash:

Home sale contingencies?

Female Speaker:

\[Inaudible\].

Mark Nash:

Not marketable?

Female Speaker:

\[Inaudible\]

Mark Nash:

I think that I continue to show, if there's a flag on it. I don\'t know
if \-- I can\'t speak for, you know, over a million realtors and other
real estate agents. I think in some markets people might not show it,
but it depends on inventory levels and if it\'s an option. Yes?

Female Speaker:

\[Inaudible\] for condo owners. What does the owner own actually?

Mark Nash:

Well, typically, as I describe it, you own, the owner owns from the
studs in, and the association owns from the studs out.

Female Speaker:

\[Inaudible\] can that happen to a condo ownership? If I buy a condo and
it's in an area slated for redevelopment, can I lose it?

Mark Nash:

Yeah. Well, no, because you have a membership right under your
condominium declarations, and the whole building would have to come to
an agreement on the sale of the whole building if it was going to be
sold to be developed and torn down.

Female Speaker:

\[Inaudible\].

Mark Nash:

No. The management is hired by the condominium association. So they\'re
benevolent to you. You tell them what to do, but they don\'t come to you
and \-- yes?

Female Speaker:

\[Inaudible\].

Mark Nash:

Oh. I think interest only loans and option arms are not good for
consumers. I think that they probably have contributed to the whole
subprime debacle we have, just starting to become more obvious. And what
was the first question?

Female Speaker:

\[Inaudible\].

Mark Nash:

If you\'re looking for property assessment, property tax assessment
information, I wrote a statistic in January; about 38 percent of the
counties have all the current information up on their Web sites. Judy.

Judy Tibbs:

Mark, I\'ve had some really good agents, and I've had some really bad
agents. And I\'m wondering if you could provide folks with suggestions
on how to find a really good agent, because it makes a huge difference.

Mark Nash:

I know. A good agent should be a full-time agent, and you have to ask
the question. I think you\'re looking for an experienced agent, and
especially in '07, in many parts of the country; someone that was in the
market before the boom \-- so, someone that started at least in 2000 or
before that. And you don\'t necessarily want a friend or a family
member. You want someone that\'s a professional; that\'s really there.
And I think sometimes if you have an emotional attachment it could skew
the transaction. This is probably one of the biggest business
transactions you\'ll be in, so you want someone that has a business
perspective.

Male Speaker:

I\'m curious about your view of a strategy for selling houses
\[inaudible\] brokers. And that is, in a buyer\'s market; rather than
only offering a co-op fee of say, 3 percent, offer a fee of 4 percent.

Mark Nash:

Raising the cooperative compensation above the competition. I think that
it will draw attention to the property, but in the end the buyer makes
the decision. And so even as the agents brings someone to a 4 percent
listing in a 3 percent market, in the end the buyer\'s going to make the
decision. Could they be nudged along? Maybe, but I think especially if
buyers find out about it \-- buyers are very savvy. It could work
against you. Yes?

Female Speaker:

\[Inaudible\] the three most important things you can do to prepare to
sell?

Mark Nash:

The three most important things you can prepare to sell is clean, clean,
clean.

\[laughter\]

Female Speaker: Other than that?

Mark Nash:

Other than that? You have to streamline and edit. And I mean, I would
take down all your personal photos, I would organize your closets and
your cupboards. And my rule of thumb is, I want to see the back wall of
every closet and every cupboard.

\[laughter\]

Sorry folks. I mean, marketing a home is not the same as living in a
home. And that\'s what most home sellers forget. And that\'s probably
primary when you\'re trying to get a home ready for market, is that
you\'re going to be living in it, but it\'s not the same. You're
marketing it, so it has to look as nice and as presentable as possible.
Yes?

Male Speaker:

So are you suggesting that a home shows better when it\'s empty?

Mark Nash:

No, I\'m not saying that a home shows better when it\'s vacant. And
we\'re starting to see that, because there is quite a bit of vacant
inventory. And now we\'re saying that it really needs to be staged,
which \-- some furniture, some props throughout the house so people can
get the sense of scale of the furniture in the house.

Male Speaker:

Is there any relationship between \[inaudible\]?

Mark Nash:

Those days \-- the question is, is there a ratio between sale price and
rents? No, those numbers really don\'t work anymore, and that\'s why a
lot of investors have gotten out of some of the rental \-- you know,
buying apartment buildings and things like that, because the values have
gone up so fast that it\'s about negative cash flow.

Male Speaker:

\[Inaudible\] boom, and then things went down a little bit. But I\'ve
heard that it\'s a cycle, and you know, at some point it will go up
again, and the value of the homes will appreciate again. Could you
predict \[inaudible\]?

Mark Nash:

I don\'t think I\'m familiar enough with the D.C. market and the
idiosyncrasies of it to comment on the cycle here.

Male Speaker:

\[Inaudible\] immediate development you don\'t have any comparables in
the last six months, how do you price right? How far \[inaudible\]?

Mark Nash:

The question is, if you don\'t have any sold comparables from the last
six months, how do you justify? You can go back to the previous sales,
try to figure out what property is appreciated for, and if you need to
go outside, you can go outside \-- I would say within one mile, which is
what appraisers would do.

Female Speaker:

You said to do homework on \[inaudible\]. I went into an open house and
I asked the agent what sort of assessments there had been in the past,
and about \[inaudible\]. Is that normal?

Mark Nash:

I think that a lot of agents would say that. But if you were serious, I
would just say, "Before I\'m going to write an offer, I want to review
the association information," because if you discover by reading the
information that \-- especially if you get minutes from condo
association meetings, you might discover there's a proposed special
assessment, so that might actually alter how you might negotiate a
contract. And if they won't give them to you, you need to move on and
find someone that will work with you.

Male Speaker:

Half of the folks that have asked questions so far are among the 40 or
50 of us that are moving to Culpepper.

\[laughter\]

So there's no wonder why we're here. One of the things that, one of the
reasons some of us are moving is that the government is paying our
closing costs, and therefore \-- a reasonable closing cost. Does that
mean you can add that extra percent? Does that mean you can pay extra
for advertising or other marketing features?

Mark Nash:

I'm not so sure I understand the question.

Male Speaker:

Well, the government pays reasonable, inexpensive closing costs,
including sellers \[inaudible\] and all that sort of stuff, but that
means we should probably be shopping for premium marketing and \--

Mark Nash:

Yes, you should be shopping, because if there's 40 or 50 of you that are
going to be moving, we know that that's going to be an injection into
the market and will increase inventory level so you'll have more
competition. And if it's reasonable and customary, yes. And I've done a
lot of corporate relocation work, and as long as they are reasonable and
customary, typically \--

Male Speaker:

An extra percent \[inaudible\]?

Mark Nash:

Yeah, employers will pay it. Now, I've never worked with the federal
government, but most corporations are flexible, especially if all of you
are running into the same scenario that "It's a competitive market, and
we have to spend money to make ourselves different."

Female Speaker:

Can you speak about foreclosures \[inaudible\] foreclosures in the area
\[inaudible\]?

Mark Nash:

There's a federal Web site that deals with foreclosures, and you \--

Female Speaker:

\[Inaudible\].

Mark Nash:

Yeah, and there's typically agents that are designated and have been
trained to deal with foreclosures, and they are listed on the Web site,
too. Yes?

Female Speaker:

\[Inaudible\].

Mark Nash:

Well, I think you can pay a premium and still look like everybody else.
I think that you're looking, I think that you should pick up some home
design and décor magazines; those are the trends that other buyers are
looking at. That's a great way, an inexpensive way to add some value and
make yourself different. But you need to get out into the market and see
who your competition is, and then you can start to figure out, "What can
I do to make myself different?" or what's a future benefit that I have
that I need to accentuate?

And I think you also \-- this time of year, we've got to think about
getting back into the yard and landscaping, and doing those types of
things. I think it's easy, this time of year to focus on the inside, but
it's also time to start to focus on the outside, and a lot of yards look
pretty dreary right now. And all of a sudden things will change, and it
could be a good afternoon or a good weekend out in the yard. And that
could be the difference that someone that's a little bit ahead of you
has figured out.

Male Speaker:

Cheap annuals.

\[laughter\]

Female Speaker:

\[Inaudible\].

Mark Nash:

Is this in the Washington, D.C. \--? It really varies in many different
areas of the country, and because it's a Webcast, I try to keep it more
national. In Chicago, typically the seller is delivered a copy when they
have bought the place. And so as a listing agent, we can make a copy. I
have a copy of my file. If someone wants to see them, I make a copy and
deliver them to them. In Chicago they run about \$25 to \$50 if you need
to buy a copy. So I think that if you call the management company, there
should be ways for you to access \-- or get minutes and budgets. I mean,
you can see what's going on in an association from a management
perspective and a financial perspective by just asking for copies of the
minutes and the budgets, which shouldn't cost anything.

Female Speaker:

\[Inaudible\].

Mark Nash:

Well in, yeah. And so, you know, to me, if you're going to buy a
\$300,000, \$400,000 condominium, and you want to do your due diligence,
it's worth \$200 or \$300 beforehand to find out what the story is with
the association. It's going to be a cost of the purchase.

Female Speaker:

\[Inaudible\].

Mark Nash:

Well, can you kind of give me a number that her fee is? I \--

Female Speaker:

\[Inaudible\].

Mark Nash:

The question is, the condo fees are \$600 for a condo in the Washington,
D.C. area \-- in Maryland, and is that unusual. It sounds to me that
there was some deferred maintenance in the building, and they're
starting to catch up, or they're trying to build a reserve fund. We are
seeing condo fees rise pretty rapidly in the last couple of years. In
Chicago we have a lot of buildings that were built in the 1960s and they
need some new windows and new roofs. And so as those fees go up, I mean,
when they were still at \$500, that's why a lot of condo owners liked
the condo but they never go to meetings. And so you need to go to the
meetings to find out what's going on before you get hit with bigger
fees. Yes?

Male Speaker:

\[Inaudible\] that right now, the seller can negotiate with a broker;
choose among people depending on the quality of service, how much
service they want and what the fee is \[inaudible\]. Buyers, though,
generally don't negotiate a fee because it's already set. In some states
they can get a lower fee because \[inaudible\] rebate, but in other
states it's prohibited. Some people have suggested that just like the
seller chooses an agent that negotiates a fee, that the buyer should
negotiate with an agent and negotiate a fee, and those things should be
separate. There shouldn't be the seller setting the buyer's fate.

Mark Nash:

I agree. I agree and the problem is, is that consumers haven't made a
big enough issue about this, and so the industry is still entrenched in
that old model. And I think that the buyer's agent should be compensated
by the buyer, and the seller's agent should be compensated by the
seller. But the consumers need to push that.

Male Speaker:

Kind of an ethical question; what is your obligation to a realtor if
they show you a house?

\[laughter\]

Say you later find another agent you like better, or \--

Mark Nash:

Do we have three hours to get into agency?

\[laughter\]

It's an agency question, and it varies by state. And every state has
different real estate license laws, and I have to defer back \-- you
know, it's about who's procuring cost, and that's another three hour
conversation. And if you had five real estate agents in this room, they
all wouldn't agree on that. So it's a long conversation and we could all
argue it, and that's the problem. And so if you feel, if a consumer gets
caught up in an agency issue, the best thing to do is just to file a
formal complaint and have your state license board resolve it.

Male Speaker:

Is that a legal question? Are there legal laws written about this?

Mark Nash:

Yeah, there are real estate laws as far as agency goes, and that's why
they vary so much. I don't want to get into what I know about in my
state, which could be totally inaccurate in other states.

Female Speaker:

\[Inaudible\]?

Mark Nash:

No, and I think earlier when you were talking about this assessed
evaluation by property tax authorities \-- in some states they're very
close. But in Illinois they're not close, so it's very much an
individual market by market, state by state, and could be even county by
county; whoever's regulating the property tax.

Female Speaker:

\[Inaudible\].

Mark Nash:

It's been a while since I've written about 10-31's; I'd go see a
financial planner and a property tax accountant to answer that question.
I believe it's a one-for-one the last time I wrote about it. Yes?

Male Speaker:

\[Inaudible\].

Mark Nash:

They're different, because they're both submarkets of the market in
general. I mean, you could have \-- in some areas, single-family homes
are very strong, but a condo market's weak. So the decrease or increase
in prices is not always equal. And that's why we don't like to get into
these generalizations that the market is off X percent. Most states now
break them down between single-family and condominiums, because they
float differently. Anybody else? Yes.

Female Speaker:

You said you were from Illinois, right? Can you give me just a brief
rundown of what's going on in terms of the market and \[inaudible\]?

Mark Nash:

Okay, well, Chicago is a big place. But generally we're seeing that
single-family sales in the city and in some near suburbs are strong.
There's quite a supply of newer condos downtown. They're selling, but
not as fast as they were a year ago, or two years ago. So it's very
difficult to get into the different dynamics in each suburb, each
subdivision, the age of the property; you might have a home that's a
contemporary, a subdivision of colonials, so there's a lot of different
things that impact the figures in a market.

Male Speaker:

How about 1000 Westbury, Lakefield?

\[laughter\]

Mark Nash:

Pardon?

Male Speaker:

1000 Westbury, Lakefield. My son is \--

\[laughter\]

Mark Nash:

It's good.

\[laughter\]

Bill Sittig:

We want to thank Mark very much, and the book is for sale outside, and
he'll be happy to sign your books right here, or to answer any further
questions you might have. So thanks again.

\[applause\]

\[end of transcript\]