I’ll admit right at the top here that what I’m about to do is cheesy, but honestly, I just can’t resist. A little over a year ago, mid-September 2006, there was a little blurb in the Washington Post about the then-president of the National Association of Realtors, Tom Stevens, not being able to sell his Virginia home.
It was really the beginning of our coverage of the housing downturn, and so we found it marvelously ironic.
The house had been on the market for a year, with an unchanged price of $1.45 million. Being the annoying reporter that I am, I cornered him (see video clip) after a hearing on the Hill, just to needle him a bit and see what he’d say: “I didn't listen to my agent. That's what consumers need to do. They need to listen to their agent. If the agent says you need to adjust the price, then you need to adjust that price, we're in a different market today,” Mr. Stevens admitted politely.
