Tick Tock

Today is the due date for the NC Association of Realtors to file a "Principal Report" for lobbying expenses with the Secretary of State's Office. I'm expecting at least $100,000 in expenses for the month of June. NCAR has been moving money around between various entities.

The NCAR 527 political committee, the antynomously named "North Carolina Homeowners Alliance" filed a mid-year report with the IRS last week claiming contributions of $380,162 since January 2007, all from NCAR, and total expenditures of $136,532. Of the total expenditures $71,034 was declared as a loan repayment to NCAR though the original $71,034 dated 8/10/2006 was never declared as a loan. The balance of $65,498 in campaign expenses brings the NCAR 2007 campaign total to $560,3884.36 not including PAC expenses or direct payments to lobbyists.

Still waiting for the NC Realtors PAC to file updated data reports with the State Board of Elections for itemization of in-kind contributions totalling $127,600 presumably incurred for "Administrative Support" expenditures during 2005 and 2006. Last week the PAC filed the 2007 mid-year report which shows a breakdown of 26 Administrative Support items totalling $61,029.90 mostly for "Employee Labor Cost" since January 2007.

Hey, guess what? Brad Paisley's coming to North Carolina. He'll be in Raleigh July 20 and Charlotte July 21 and he'll be checking you for Ticks:
Brad Paisley: Click for "Ticks"

Realtor Population Explosion

In 2002 The North Carolina Association of Realtor (NCAR) reported over 26,000 members. That grew in 2005 to over 32,000 members, in 2006 to over 38,000 members and currently in 2007 a claimed membership of over 42,000. That is the equivalent of an annual growth rate of 10% per year since 2002 and a growth rate of 15% per year for the last two years. NCAR criticisms of the growth in public services due to population growth don’t seem to apply to their own organization.

That growth rate is faster than increases in population or economic growth in North Carolina. NCAR bemoans the modest take-home pay of individual realtors. It is becoming clearer that too many individual realtors are getting a smaller and smaller slice of the pie even as the pie has been growing. Home values have risen faster than consumer inflation as real estate commissions have remained steady. Homeowners are paying out more dollars now for the same transactions made 5 years ago even when adjusted for consumer inflation.

It is clear that the large sums of money involved in real estate transactions, where property values are rising, are attracting a lot of people to the business. Individual realtors may be seeing a decline in income because there is more competition. More competition has not led to a substantial lowering of cost for consumers because of NCAR’s strong hold on the market and, it seems, on legislators. NCAR now has a large base of nervous realtors ready to part with PAC money to shore up the monopolistic hold on the real estate business.

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