glenn (1)

For the past 3 years my life has consisted of one thing - researching REO. Every aspect of REO that is. When you have thousands of members and clients that depend on your company for results it can be a daunting thing. Especially when the government makes over 20 changes to the TARP program within 9 months!The past 3 weeks have been dedicated to the development of our new levels of training (2 and 3) which are going to be geared towards the REO Masters Network directors. The way that this network is being designed resembles an undergraduate and graduate program. With the REOM being the "graduate" program I had to step it up a little bit with content. So, with that end in mind I began with a "State of the Market" initial presentation, ended with a "Future Projections" summary and then sandwiched some cutting-edge REO stuff in between. I should have given myself 3 MONTHS!I can say that I've learned a lot, which is always a great thing. I was kind of waiting-out the whole government involvement of real estate until the dust settled so as not to fry any of my mental circuitry. I watched from September 08 through March of 09 as colleagues were trying to decipher the realities of the real estate market, TARP, the Financial Stability Plan, "Making Home Affordable", HOPE NOW, and the mergers of banks left and right. In my little universe I was telling myself the whole time, "just keep track of everything, but don't try to figure it out yet". Whew! Glad I made that decision and stuck with it.Fellow professionals I'm here to say that this market is absolutely, undoubtedly one of the craziest markets in American history. Go watch some of the real estate market videos on YouTube of Mark Zandi of Moody's or Glenn Beck (whatever your personal opinion may be, these guys toss out some pretty indisputable stats).Oh, and if you have a couple of minutes, check out the Wall Street Journal's take on the history of the meltdown (there are 3 parts, but I'm only embedding part 1):OK, back to the think tank.Sincerely,Dan Waterman
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