Changing Homebuying Landscape -Subject of Minority Real Estate Professionals National Convention
Washington, DC – Short sales, bank owned properties, tightened lending guidelines, and innovative public/private sector community revitalization initiatives rank high on the agenda of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB®) 63RD Annual Convention, July 29-August 4, at the Renaissance Worthington Hotel, 200 Main Street in Fort Worth, Texas.
Bringing together real estate professionals, analysts, financial services executives, government housing officials, and insurers, NAREB is working to reconstruct the homebuying marketplace for African Americans and other multicultural populations. Under the banner, “Realtists®….Serving Our Communities with Integrity, Trust and Truth,” NAREB’s agenda focuses upon solutions-based strategies that support homeownership sustainability, mortgage lending transparency, and reversal of the foreclosure cycle.
“NAREB’s convention sets the tone for a collaborative approach to reverse the continued economic distress and uncertainty afflicting African-American communities, homeowners and prospective homebuyers. Real solutions require the full involvement of policymakers, the financial sector, real estate professionals, housing counselors, and advocates. We’ve put out the call. The sector decision makers who responded are ready to buckle down,” said Vincent Wimbish, President and CEO of NAREB, the nation’s oldest minority professional trade association.
Highlights include an expert panel , led by Keith Corbett, Executive Vice President for External Affairs at Self-Help, Inc. and its affiliate, the Center for Responsible Lending, tackling the topic, “The Economics of Recovery: Ensuring Affordable and Sustainable Options for African-American Homeowners.” Panelists include: Lawrence W. Parks, Senior Vice President, of the $300 million wholesale bank, the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco; Anika R. Khan, seasoned economist for Wells Fargo & Co., and Victor Galloway, Director of Special Research and Policy Projects for The North Carolina Institute of Minority Economic Development. Sunday’s keynote speaker, senior HUD official, Ben Johnson, Director of the Denver Homeownership Center covering 17states, addresses the topic, “The Road to Recovery and What FHA Must Do.”
Maurice Jourdain-Earl, Managing Director, Compliance Technologies in his presentation, “HMDA [Home Mortgage Disclosure Act] Data: The Story Behind the Numbers,” sheds light on the detection of discriminatory lending practices. Jourdain-Earl is credited with being a thought leader in the development of “LendingPatterns™, the first online HMDA data mining tool that analyzes the lending patterns by race, gender, income and geography of every lender in the U.S.
The Convention agenda reflects NAREB’s single-focused, yet multi-pronged approach to community rebuilding, one prospective homebuyer and one homeowner at a time able to sustain the financial commitment of homeownership. “We’re making sure that our Realtist® members are prepared and knowledgeable about the ever-evolving real estate landscape,” Wimbish stated.
