NAR’s chief economist here Nov. 18

BOULDER – The chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, Lawrence Yun, is coming to Boulder to share his viewpoints on the regional and national economy.

Yun will highlight a group of about 20 speakers at the third annual Boulder Valley Real Estate Conference and Forecast, presented by the Boulder County Business Report and Re/Max of Boulder.

The conference is from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 18, at the Millennium Harvest House, 1345 28th St. in Boulder. Tickets cost $59 and include lunch.

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Yun directs research activity and provides commentary on real estate market trends for the National Association of Realtors and its 1.2 million members. Previewing his talk, he said the next year will be a big test for the nation’s real estate markets to see if they can recover naturally, without the help of federal stimulus and home buyer tax credits.

“At the moment, there are some signs of recovery, but sales activity is still below what it would be in a normal real estate market,” Yun said. “What’s encouraging is that we’re seeing home sales prices improving from last year in most markets.”

Yun said the most important factor for the real estate market will be jobs.  He sees that improving going into 2011.

“This job creation is sluggish, but non-the-less it is job creation,” Yun said.

For Colorado, Yun said the state is in relative better shape that the rest of the nation, but he stressed the word relative, because the market is still struggling, just maybe not as bad as other places

“The Colorado market saw what I would call a mini-bubble a few years ago,” Yun said. “There wasn’t a big surge in home prices, but we did see heavy building activity in the Boulder, Denver and Fort Collins metro areas.”

That led to an oversupply of new homes here, especially when demand dried up, he said. Construction has since slowed to a crawl, so “that should help control inventory levels and improve the market going forward,” Yun said.

Yun said the recent election results may give a lift to the real estate market as well.

“Usually right after an election, there’s a boost in consumer confidence because the voters’ majority has just won,” he said. “Second to jobs, consumer confidence is very important to the real estate market”

Yun also will talk about a recent win for the National Association of Realtors, as it successfully lobbied Congress to extend higher conforming loan limits backed by the government through Sept. 30, 2011.

The legislation, which was originally enacted in 2008, allows the Federal Housing Administration to back loans as high as $417,000 in most of the nation, and even higher amounts up to $729,750 in deemed “high-cost” areas. In Boulder County, for example, the conforming loan limit was raised to $460,000.

The government has been helping to back some higher-priced, so-called jumbo loans, until the more of the private market returns to support them without significantly higher interest rates.

Yun has been with the National Association of Realtors since 2000. Prior to that, he worked as an economic consultant to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Department of Education. From 1995 to 1998, while a research associate at the University of Maryland, he was based in the former Soviet Union where he developed economics programs at several universities to help in the transition from communism to a market-based economy.

Yun received his undergraduate degree from Purdue University and earned his doctorate from the University of Maryland at College Park.

The Boulder Valley Real Estate Conference and Forecast will cover a variety of commercial and residential topics, such as selling in a stalled economy, transit-oriented development and large local projects on the horizon. The event culminates in a forecast of regional and national trends. Experts from the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., University of Colorado Leeds School of Business and area government officials also are scheduled to make presentations.

Register online at www.bcbr.com/bcbr_events.asp.