Our final TWO workshops will ne held in Kansas City, MO and Boston. Please refer to our web site and as always please do not hesitate to contact me for any additional questions.

Our Official Fall Annual Conference Registration will open soon so please stay tuned.

Please have a great day and thanks again!

Bob

• Conference Board: US housing sector’s recovery to be driven by demand for rental properties
• New homes will be downsized back to 1990s space measurements
• Smaller living space will change consumer spending habits

By Kathleen Madigan, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

NEW YORK (DOW JONES)–Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like a rented apartment.

That may be the mantra of U.S. households for the next three years, according to a new study to be released later Tuesday by the Demand Institute division of the U.S. Conference Board. Most Americans still hope to own a home, the study found–but that home will be smaller than the MacMansions of the housing boom.

Housing and the related mortgage industry helped to tip the U.S. into the Great Recession. Data suggest the sector is bottoming out, but its recovery will be unlike that of past business cycles, according to the Demand Institute’s report, entitled "The Shifting Nature of U.S. Housing Demand."

The first stage of this recovery will be led by rental properties. Past homeowners who lost their houses to foreclosure, young adults who are now living at home or who haven’t saved a down payment, and new immigrants will drive the demand to lease rather than to buy.

As a result, new construction will be concentrated in multi-unit projects, a shift already evident in 2012 data. At the same time, speculators hoping to cash in on increasing rents will buy up vacant properties with an eye to leasing them, helping to pare down the huge oversupply of existing homes on the market.

Renting households who tend to own fewer cars than home owners (in part because of the expense of parking) will prefer apartments within walking distance to retail, school and work, or towns with good mass-transit systems. That will make certain urban areas more attractive than the suburbs and rural areas, the study said.

Homeownership isn’t dead, however, argued Louise Keely, chief research officer at the Institute and one of the study’s authors. It will simply be delayed, because consumers are still repairing their finances, and reconfigured, because big is no longer better in housing.

"Many [buyers] will scale back their housing aspirations," according to the report, which projected that the average size of a newly built home will shrink to 2,150 square feet by 2015 from a housing-boom high of 2,500 square feet. The downsizing will bring home sizes back to mid-1990s levels.

Less space will change spending patterns. "Almost every consumer-facing industry will feel this effects consumers adapt" to new housing choices, the report said.

Activities once reserved for home will be outsourced–creating business opportunities, Keely said. These includes commercial storage spaces in place of big basements and attics, and gym membership instead of a personal work-out room at home. Food and nondurable retailers may find shoppers making more visits but buying less each time because of fewer cupboards in their homes.

Keely also said banks could develop financial products that help renters go from leasing to owning. This is because, after all the havoc wreaked by the housing sector on the economy and many consumers’ individual finances, homeownership remains a key goal for many Americans. The report cited a Pew Research survey that showed 80% of respondents still think buying a home is the best long-term investment they can make.

The Demand Institute is jointly operated by the Conference Board and Nielsen Holdings N.V.(NLSN).

The full Demand Institute housing report can be found at: www.demandinstitute.org.

-By Kathleen Madigan, Dow Jones Newswires; kathleen.madigan@dowjones.com

Copyright (c) 2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Great workshop for us in Orlando… The following was one of the topics drawing interesting discussion from our participants.

In February and January of this year mortgage firms hired 5,500 workers. That’s good news for the industry and shows that residential finance is on the rise again after several rough years of dealing with record delinquencies, sagging home values, tougher regulations, and the general perception that “renting is good.” But there is something else afoot going on in mortgage banking: the growing debate among residential loan officers over where they should work: a depository or a nonbank. We’ve reported extensively on the issue and plan to ramp up our coverage in the months ahead. One thing is for certain: going forward nonbank firms will try to market themselves as the only “true” licensed professionals walking the beat, which leads to this question: How will bank LOs and their employers fight back? Many banks are publicly traded and have to answer to Wall Street. We see several privately held nonbanks that aren’t afraid to spend real money to hire the ‘best in class.’ This could get interesting.