Econo-Whore Lereah to leave NAR

In what could have been a move to restore some semblance of credibility, the National Association of Realtors chief economist David Lereah is stepping down. He will become chairman & parter of a new division being started by Move, Inc.

Lereah is probably one of the most vilified individuals in blogosphere history.

Lereah is fairly infamous for his uncanny ability to NEVER be correct about the US housing market. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, but Lereah demonstrated NAR subscribed to the May West theory of Optimistic Forecasting: Too much of a good thing is wonderful! NAR clearly never really wanted an economist, as much as they wanted a perma-optimist who would ALWAYS be wrong on the upside. "Realism" it seems, doesn't quite sell as many houses as a "pump-N-dump" cheerleader.

One thing I have no doubt about: Lereah is going to make more money at Move, Inc. than he ever did at NAR. This man's ability to turn persistent delusions of grandeur into money says volumes about human nature. We only want to hear what we want to hear, and organizations will pay dearly for someone who can persistently and voluminously delude the masses into swallowing their bullshit.

Before you head down to the nearest watering hole to celebrate this victory for the American homebuying public, know that Move, Inc. is the owner of Realtor.com. This website is something of a nationwide clearinghouse for listings. Clive's inventory counter uses this website to compute outstanding inventory in the Bend area. Hopefully Lereah and his penchant for borderline fraudulent representations are kept as far away from the database as possible.