Originally posted January 8, 2007
Most of our readers are probably familiar with who he is but just in case… Jon Lansner is the business columnist for the OC Register. He also keeps a Real Estate blog that has some great information. Some find him too bullish on real estate and others find him to be too much of a bear. I think he does a pretty good job of staying abreast of and keeping us informed of what’s going on in Orange County.

The Orange County Real Estate Forum is a group that meets on the 2nd Tuesday Thursday of every month. I’ve only been to one meeting and it seems geared towards the small investor. There are people pitching all kinds of investments from all over the country as well as services for the small real estate investor. One of the things I liked about the meeting I attended was that they had some great speakers who give their perspective on various topics. The meetings are open to the public and the cost to attend a meeting is $25 and it takes place at the Double Tree Hotel in the Irvine Spectrum. You’ll see all kinds of people (young and old, casually and formally dressed, flippers, contractors, agents, etc).

This Thursday from 7-10pm, the OC Real Estate Forum is having it’s monthly meeting and one of the guest speakers is Jon Lansner. His topic is “How Far Down Will Real Estate Slide in Orange County in 2007” and that’s got me interested. 🙂

Anyways, I’m considering checking the meeting out and thought some of you might be interested as well.

UPDATE #1 – January 12, 2007

Soo.. I attended the meeting and saw and heard a few interesting things. Too bad it cost me $25 and 3 hours of my time 🙁 The first half of the meeting was led by Norm (from www.normandmike.com). Apparently they have a radio show that they’ve been doing for some time. Norm asked everyone what they wanted out of the monthly meetings. Many of the people that voiced their opinions said they did NOT want speakers that were there to ‘educate’ and sell them some sort of package. They wanted real education on a number of real estate investment topics. Norm completely agreed with them. Interesting, because one of the first things I see when I click on his site is an advertisement for a Mortgage Accelerator package that he is selling for $1295. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt until I get to spend a little more time figuring out what they are all about.

In between the first and second parts of the meeting, there were about 15 minutes where people had the opportunity to network and get to meet each other. There was also some free time like this before 7pm. I heard ‘the regulars’ throw around names like Guy Kawasaki and Donald Trump while they were hawking their their flyers (I should have scanned them all and posted them but alas I threw them all away). I heard people talking about how they want real estate to create passive income for them (don’t we all want passive income?? 😉 ). Others were saying how they want to invest in real estate so they can retire comfortably and take care of their kids.

I’m sure there were some seasoned real estate investors there but there was definitely NO shortage of people who did not know what they were doing. Yet some of these people were buying (or had already bought) with the intent of flipping. A couple guys were talking about how they were working a couple of short sales. One of them admitted he did not know what he was doing and he wanted to sell to someone else (hopefully in the audience). Good luck!

Another guy started investing 20 years ago and paid off a condo that is now generating positive cash flow. He also went on to share that he bought a couple more properties in the last few years (one in Phoenix I think and one elsewhere) that are producing a slightly negative cashflow. He’s confident those markets will pickup and so were most of the people in the room.

One gentlemen started ‘investing’ in 2005. He bought homes in Las Vegas and Temecula. Unable to flip either of them (even below their appraisal price – surprise, surprise), he’s stuck paying the mortgages on both now. His experiences sounded like he may have been scammed. He really believed the homes were worth what they were appraised at (most likely by a scammer).

Overall though, I’d have to say the majority of the group (a few dummies disagreed) did not think it was a good idea to buy an investment property in OC at the time. They were interested in foreclosures, out of state investing, tax liens, etc. Although there was definitely some interest in buying a fixer and selling it (IMHO that’s just foolish for the inexperienced in today’s market).
The second half of the meeting was Jon Lansner speaking about where real estate is headed in 2007. He showed chart after chart of various OC trends (real estate price change, population, etc). It would be nice if he puts them up somewhere. At the end, he had a little survey where he asked everyone what they predict the market will do in 2007. Most believed the market would slide between 0-10% in 2007. When asked what he though, Lansner said when he did the survey himself, his prediction was a 3-4% slide. He felt that the OC economy was very strong. But he was definitely worried about how little the absolute population growth in OC has been lately.

Lansner was definitely trying to stay on the fence in regards to being bullish or bearish in Orange County. He thought the high rises were not a good idea for an investment property but that there are people who enjoy that lifestyle and will pay for that. He joked about how bad the traffic would be over there once they build it all out and that a bridge that Lennar is planning to build (any details anyone?) will probably not do much to alleviate the future traffic there.

All in all, it was a good talk. I’d much rather have preferred to watch a webcast of it from the comfort of my own home. Would I go back? Maybe.. if they had some real educational topics.

Anyone else attend and have comments?