ST. PAUL, Minn. – Arizona Sen. John McCain vowed to stand up and fight for the country to keep it safe from global threats and help rebound from a sagging economy, as he accepted the Republican party’s nomination for president of the United States here tonight.
“These are tough times for many of you,” McCain told the crowd at the Xcel Center. “You’re worried about keeping your job or finding a new one, and are struggling to put food on the table and stay in your home. All you ever asked of government is to stand on your side, not in your way. And that’s just what I intend to do -- stand on your side and fight for your future.”
During his speech, McCain said he found the right partner in his vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, to help him shake up Washington, which drew cheers from the crowd, who had been won over by Palin after her energetic speech last night.
“I fight for Americans,” McCain said. “I fight for you. I fight for Bill and Sue Nebe from Farmington Hills, Michigan, who lost their real estate investments in the bad housing market.
More than 200 Republican and about 100 Democratic delegates at the 2008 Republican and Democratic National Conventions are also REALTORS. Why did they decide to take on this role in our country's election process and how has it helped them in their real estate business? We caught up with several REALTOR delegates during the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. Watch the video and hear how their political involvement has helped them.
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Watch video footage from REALTOR Randy McKinney, a Republican delegate from Alabama, as his state casts its delegate votes for the presidential nomination of Sen. John McCain.
Republican Convention: Keeping the Focus on That First Rung of the Housing Ladder
Robert Freedman, Senior Editor
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- As the political excitement at the Republican National Convention entered its third day, much of the attention among politicos and the media was on the upcoming speech of vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska. But about a mile from the Xcel Energy Center, where the festivities are taking place, NAR President-elect Charles McMillan paid a visit to Ravoux House, a high-rise public housing project with several hundred elderly and disabled residents that’s everything critics and supporters say public housing should be: safe, decent, and affordable.
“There are still people who cannot afford the American Dream and in the current environment that’s becoming even more difficult,” said McMillan, who went on to praise the work of the St. Paul, Minn., Housing Authority for its success with its Ravoux community. “But we must do more to help not only those struggling to get on the bottom rung of the housing ladder, whether that’s ownership or shelter through rental programs, and we must do more to preserve homeownership for those who are threatened with losing their homes.” (Watch a video of McMillian's remarks.)
Inside the Xcel Center, amidst all the political speeches, some 2,000 delegates and tens of thousands of other convention-goers heard that same call for homeownership preservation.
“Today, Americans are concerned about keeping their jobs, about keeping their homes,” said Carly Fiorina, former chairperson and CEO of global technology giant Hewlett-Packard, who spoke on the convention floor that evening.
The core of any plan to stem the mortgage crisis and ramp up economic growth must start
Watch video highlights of NAR President-elect Charles McMillan, and REALTOR® and Nevada Republican delegate Jack Woodcock talk about the real estate and politics at 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn.
Republican Convention: Service Is Showcased, REALTORS® Show the Way
Robert Freedman, Senior Editor
ST. PAUL, Minn. — When Bill Gross was at the podium in the Xcel Energy Center Tuesday evening, the second day of the Republican National Convention here, he moved many of the delegates and other convention-goers with his stories of the farmers helped by Farm Rescue, a nonprofit group he founded. The group doesn’t step in with money; rather, it deploys volunteers — often other farmers — to help plant, maintain, and harvest crops for farmers who’ve suffered a disabling injury and need time to recuperate before they can get back to their fields.
As Gross put it, “We give them an opportunity to continue their livelihood during an unexpected crisis.”
Shortly after Gross made his remarks, the convention heard from Ashley Gunn, a junior at the University of Pennsylvania who launched a nonprofit that turns abandoned houses into affordable homeownership opportunities for indigent households.
What struck me as I was listening to these stories is how much they resemble the kind of work REALTORS® do every day in their communities and that are showcased each year in the REALTOR® magazine Good Neighbor Awards. As a frequent judge for these awards, I know that the winners and runners-up represent just a fraction of the hundreds of entries submitted each year. Without a doubt, for REALTORS®, every day is “service” day.
That’s a message NAR and the hundreds of REALTORS® serving as delegates to this and the Democratic convention last week have been sharing with lawmakers and others involved in the
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- The scene of protestors on Kellogg St. outside the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul was chaotic but for the hundreds of REALTORS® here attending as delegates to the Republican National Convention the focus was on the Gulf Coast.
As they did when the Gulf Coast was struck by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, REALTORS® stepped up with donations to the REALTOR® Relief Fund. But in this case, they were opening their wallets even before it was clear what the full impact of Hurricane Gustav would be.
“It was extremely moving to see how quickly REALTORS® came forward in this time of need,” said NAR President-elect Charles McMillan.
While Gustav was making landfall, NAR and another group, the Creative Coalition, were hosting a joint forum to hear from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development staff on the recently passed housing bill at a restaurant across the river in Minneapolis. The Creative Coalition is the social advocacy arm of the entertainment industry, and the group, along with NAR, also hosted a joint meeting at the Democratic National Convention in Denver the previous week.
Official activities at the convention were curtailed because of Gustav, with First Lady Laura Bush and Cindy McCain, wife of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona -- the only two keynoters on Monday. However, convention-goers stayed busy with a phalanx of meetings and forums outside the convention hall.
More than 200 REALTORS®, representing 44 states, were in town as delegates to the convention. They’ll be joining more than 2,000 other delegates this week to vote on the nomination of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska for vice president and John McCain for president.
For the REALTOR® community, they’ll be communicating the importance of REALTOR® issues
Watch highlights from this week's Democratic National Convention. Stay tuned next week as we bring you coverage from the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis.
DENVER – Obamamania was in full force tonight as Barack Obama accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in front of a thunderous crowd of 80,000.
“It’s time for us to change America,” Obama told a cheering crowd, who waved American flags in the air and created a rumble in the stadium by stomping their feet in agreement.
Crowds lined up starting midday, waiting in security lines that at times stretched more than a mile, all so they could watch Obama accept the party’s nomination Thursday night at Invesco’s Mile High Stadium.
“We meet at one of those defining moments - a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more,” Obama said. ”Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can't afford to drive, credit card bills you can't afford to pay, and tuition that's beyond your reach. These challenges are not all of government's making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush.”
Throughout the evening, Obama and other speakers – including Al Gore and Vice President nominee Joe Biden – sought to closely tie the policies of Bush to McCain.
In his 45-minute speech, Obama offered up some specifics of what his “change” agenda
DENVER - REALTOR® Michael Eaves, a broker specializing in commercial real estate investments for Long & Foster REALTORS® in Bel Air, Md., is one of nearly 100 delegates who are REALTORS® at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Eaves serves as a delegate in Maryland.
Watch some of his video reports from the convention floor on Wednesday.
Melissa Dittmann Tracey, Associate Multimedia Editor, and Robert Freedman, Senior Editor
DENVER – No matter who comes out on top in the presidential race, several REALTOR® issues are likely to be at the forefront of the national legislative agenda, NAR Chief Lobbyist Jerry Giovaniello said at the 2008 Democratic National Convention here yesterday. (Hear it in his own words: Watch video highlights of Giovaniello talking about these key REALTOR® issues.)
During a housing reception hosted by NAR, the National Association of Home Builders, and the Independent Community Bankers of America, Giovaniello predicted small business health care will be one of the first orders of business in Congress.
“Whichever party is elected there’s going to be a lot of resources devoted to coming up with a workable, bipartisan health care plan,” Giovaniello said.
The government will also take a closer look at modernizing the financial system for housing. By early 2009, lawmakers will have a clearer picture of what needs to be done based on the
DENVER - It’s too dark to see clearly in Osteria Marco, one of Denver’s trendy bistros, but the person sitting against the back wall is definitely Spike Lee, the famed movie director, and in the center of the room actress Susan Sarandon. And not far from the two of them is Henry Cisneros, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development during President Bill Clinton’s first term.
These three and others have gathered in this restaurant about half a mile from the national democratic convention center to participate in a town hall meeting about the other housing crisis, the one hitting low- and moderate-income renter households (Watch some video highlights.) More than six million renter households must pay more than 50 percent of their monthly income for rent, leaving them little for food, transportation, and health care.
Cisneros, who now heads up a company that develops housing for working families, says lawmakers in 2009 must address the homeownership slowdown without ignoring the ongoing, yet far less visible, crisis in the rental world.
Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, another participant, agreed that the challenge for housing advocates is to keep him and other lawmakers on top of both problems at once, an admittedly tough task given the primacy of the homeownership market to the overall U.S. economy.
“Housing is the economic crisis of the country,” he says. “But you need to keep us honest. We need to stay focused on rental housing.”
It might seem incongruous to have a discussion about low-income rental housing at a swanky bistro but this incongruence is part of what makes the town hall discussion effective; it’s bringing together the high-profile world of Hollywood and New York City with the high-power
Democrats Meet in Denver, Amidst is the REALTOR® R
Robert Freedman, Senior Editor
DENVER – Sixteenth Street is packed beyond imagination. This wide boulevard, redeveloped by the city about two dozen years ago into a downtown pedestrian mall with service by a cheery electric streetcar , is where you find much of the throng that’s gathered in this city to attend the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
You have protest groups in which everyone is dressed in black, and those in which everyone is dressed in pink; you have vendors hawking a dizzying array of stickers, buttons, and T-shirts of the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, Barack Obama; you have an even dizzier array of people with their credentials hanging prominently around their necks; and you have security personnel, many armed with black and glistening automatic weapons, on every street corner and in the doorways to the restaurants and stores.
But amidst this chaos it’s the truck that’s been making a loop up and down 16th Street and around the delegate headquarters at the nearby Colorado Convention Center that attracts my attention: It’s a sign truck with a gigantic REALTOR® R and the message “Make sure you use a REALTOR® to get real results,” sponsored by the Colorado Association of REALTORS®.
I know I’m not the only one here who takes a professional interest in this friendly reminder of what sets REALTORS® apart from others who sell real estate; out of 4,233 delegates in town,
NAR leaders are feeling good about the settlement agreement announced Tuesday with the U.S. Justice Department. I spoke with NAR General Counsel Laurie Janik and Associate General Counsel Ralph Holmen on Wednesday. They emphasized two important wins for REALTORS®.
First, MLSs are strengthened: They can now prevent the participation of nonpractitioners who just want to sell buyer leads back to working brokers. Second, sellers will have more say in how their listings are presented online. Under the final order — which will be open for a 60-day comment period before it's truly final — sellers can have false or undesirable information (such as unfavorable blog posts) removed from their property listing on so-called "virtual office Web sites." These VOWs were at the heart of the lawsuit the DOJ filed against NAR in 2005.
Not surprisingly, attorneys at the Justice Department are characterizing the settlement as a government victory. That's because under the final order, brokers won't be able to selectively opt out of having their listings placed on VOW sites.
The federal government is spending some $20 billion a year or so on infrastructure development and modernization but according to a report released last week by the Urban Land Institute, that annual investment falls short by some $200 billion a year of what's needed. That's because much of our infrastructure is about 50 years old and is not only becoming structurally unsound but needs redevelopment to accommodate the size of loads we put on it today.
One of the things I’ve enjoyed since joining REALTOR magazine last July is the amount of contact we have with our readers. We get lots of e-mail and letters, and that’s a great thing. One of the primary missions of quality journalism is to promote discussion by providing information people need to and want to know. Getting feedback from readers helps us do that.
With that said, though, I have to say I was a bit surprised by the number of e-mail messages we received in reaction to a story in our December 2007 issue outlining the views of various presidential candidates on real estate and real estate-related issues.
Several readers objected to the pictures we used of the candidates. They alleged we were somehow trying to steer our readers to vote for a Democrat because the Democratic candidate were smiling in their photos while the Republicans were not.
Let me put that issue to rest. As I’ve already written some of the concerned letter writers, all those photos were supplied to us by the candidates. We in no way wanted to influence anyone or indicate support for any candidate by the pictures we used.
Nor do we expect readers to be sycophants for the real estate industry. (One letter writer chastised us for being too parochial.) We realize that you won’t choose a candidate based
ST. PAUL, Minn. – Arizona Sen. John McCain vowed to stand up and fight for the country to keep it safe from global threats and help rebound from a sagging economy, as he accepted the Republican party’s nomination for president of the United States here tonight.
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- As the political excitement at the Republican National Convention entered its third day, much of the attention among politicos and the media was on the upcoming speech of vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska. But about a mile from the Xcel Energy Center, where the festivities are taking place, NAR President-elect Charles McMillan paid a visit to Ravoux House, a high-rise public housing project with several hundred elderly and disabled residents that’s everything critics and supporters say public housing should be: safe, decent, and affordable. 
Inside the Xcel Center, amidst all the political speeches, some 2,000 delegates and tens of thousands of other convention-goers heard that same call for homeownership preservation. 
DENVER – Obamamania was in full force tonight as Barack Obama accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in front of a thunderous crowd of 80,000. 
“We meet at one of those defining moments - a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more,” Obama said.
”Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can't afford to drive, credit card bills you can't afford to pay, and tuition that's beyond your reach. These challenges are not all of government's making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush.”
DENVER - It’s too dark to see clearly in Osteria Marco, one of Denver’s trendy bistros, but the person sitting against the back wall is definitely Spike Lee, the famed movie director, and in the center of the room actress Susan Sarandon. And not far from the two of them is Henry Cisneros, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development during President Bill Clinton’s first term. 
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