Harley Davidson Biker Rally final numbers

The Harley Davidson Biker Rally ended officially Sunday.

Here's a look at the final numbers compiled by Horry County's Emergency Operations Center.

There were a total of 135 accidents during the rally.

Three of them were fatal. In all 163 people were injured.

Experts say preliminary numbers show about 250,000 people were here over the ten days, including bikers, golfers and other tourists. That's down at least 10% from last year.

"As far as Myrtle Beach Harley Davidson goes, we had a good week," said Mike Shank with Harley Davidson.

"At Jamin' Leather we were very busy," said Jamin' Jamie Keats of Jamin Leather.

"We were very fortunate," said Shawn Croley of Surfside Live. "We did have a few record breaking nights this past week."

But the bikers weren't spending money everywhere.

"It was a lot slower than what we thought it would be," said Rachel Bailey of Tequila Mockingbird.

Certain bars didn't welcome as many bikers as they would have liked. Vendors also complained about a lack of business.

This year, fewer bikers made their way to the Grand Strand for the Harley Davidson Spring Rally, and with a new vendor location at Hard Rock Park on Highway 501, the bikers that were here were more spread out.

"I do think it moved traffic around a little more, away from Highway 17, and maybe some of the congested areas so that may have thinned things out in different areas around town," said Shank.

Still, traffic managed to mount as bikers left town Sunday.

As the rally wraps up, businesses look ahead to next year, when they expect more bikers and more money.

"I expect 2009 to be a better year, and 2010 I think it will blow up again," said Keats. "Once the election year is over and once gas prices start leveling out and people get used to it, things will change."

Gas prices and the economy are likely reasons the bike rally numbers were down.

3 people died in Harley-Davidson spring motorcycle rally.

The Horry County coroner says a 42-year-old Myrtle Beach man died from injuries he suffered in motorcycle accident during the annual Harley-Davidson spring motorcycle rally.

Coroner Robert Edge says Hilton L. Brown died from head injuries Saturday afternoon in the emergency room of Grand Strand Regional Medical Center.

Horry County Police Captain David Knipes says Brown was driving his motorcycle fast when he missed a curve near the Marriott Resort entrance.

No other vehicles were involved.

It was the third fatality in the 10-day rally that wrapped up Sunday.

The spring rally typically draws about 200,000 people to the 60-mile stretch of beaches from Georgetown to the North Carolina state line.

Three people died in accidents last year.

Lou Dobbs said stronger economy by the year’s end.

Speaking to thousands of real estate professionals on May 18, CNN Anchor and Managing Editor Lou Dobbs said the U.S. economic situation can be summed up with three words: normal business cycle.

Tens of thousands of real estate professionals worldwide packed into the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel to hear Dobbs’ keynote address at the 2008 International Council of Shopping Center’s Real Estate Convention. The annual convention is the world’s largest professional real estate event.

Beginning May 17, the event’s trade expo, leasing mall and general sessions sees more than 50,000 of the real estate industry’s top representatives.

“[The U.S. economy] is in a business cycle,” Dobbs said. “It’s been our experience for the past 200 years in the country and yet we have economists acting as if the slowdown is the same thing as Armageddon. It’s just a business cycle.”

Dobbs said his advice to real estate professionals is to hold tight for a stronger economy by the year’s end.

“This economy, through its natural strength and resilience, will recover and will be recovering demonstratively by this fall,” he said.

The real estate market, which has been beleaguered by financing troubles, rising interest rates and a halting housing market, has seen a downturn in recent months.

The 2007-2008 International Council of Shopping Centers Worldwide Chairman Rene Tremblay said the economic situation presents real estate professionals with an opportunity and the convention is a time for the nation's real estate developers to decide if, as an industry, “we are going to be paralyzed by fear or be emboldened by opportunity,” he said.

Despite real estate industry woes, International Council of Shopping Centers President and CEO Michael Kercheval said the organization and the convention’s numbers continue to grow.

The conference, he said, has seen a 13 percent increase in participation in its leasing and trade malls and 321 new companies have reserved booth space at the event.

Kercheval also reported that the convention has delegates from 60 nations in attendance and a record-breaking 2,638 public sector officials filing the Las Vegas Convention Center halls. ICSC membership is up 8 percent from its 2007 tally to more than 76,000.

“[Membership from] the capital market has dipped, but that decline has been dwarfed by a surge in members from the public sector, developers and retailers,” Kercheval said.

Dobbs shared Kercheval’s bright outlook. Citing the past decade’s Internet, technology and housing bubbles and their subsequent collapses, Dobbs said the United States has seen a roller coaster economy. But, he said, he does not “believe the country will see a classic recession.”

Home sales and prices poised for improvement

Home sales and prices throughout most of the country are poised for improvement in the second half of 2008, and the recovery will vary by market, Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors® said during NAR’s Midyear Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo. More than 9,000 Realtors and guests attended the conference that ran through Saturday.

Middle-America cities that performed evenly over the past few years - like Cincinnati, Milwaukee and the Kansas City, Mo., area - are likely to experience home price gains in the 20 to 30% range over the next five years, while markets like Miami, Las Vegas and Phoenix could see prices go up as much as 50% during that time period, Yun said.

Yun blamed most of the softening of the housing market over the last year on the “subprime mess,” where consumers with blemished credit records got loans they couldn’t afford when the interest rates reset to higher levels.

“In fact, if you look at where home prices fell the most, it’s the markets were subprime loans were prevalent,” Yun said. Cape Coral, Fla.; Detroit; Las Vegas; Miami; Orlando, Fla.; Phoenix and Riverside, Calif. were among the cities with a high percentage of subprime lending and where the markets suffered the biggest downturns, he explained.

“It’s important to keep things in context,” he said. “While much of the media is focusing on the fact that the rate of foreclosures doubled this year from historic averages, the foreclosure rate has gone from 1 percent of all homeowners with mortgages to 2 percent. Foreclosures are being driven principally by subprime loans.”

He further explained that more than half of today’s foreclosures are concentrated in the subprime market. The great majority of homeowners are making their mortgage payments on time.

Now that the subprime market has dried up, and loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration and those purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are making a comeback, the housing markets will strengthen and prices are likely to begin a steady uptick in the coming months, Yun said.

Yun urged the Congress and White House to enact NAR-supported legislation to modernize FHA programs, reform regulation of the government-sponsored enterprises (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), establish a first-time home buyer tax credit, and make the temporary increases to the conforming loan limits established by the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 permanent.

“These measures would quickly stabilize the housing markets and get fence-sitters into the market to buy homes,” Yun said.

“There are many reasons for people to get into the housing market today, and very few reasons not to. With the plentiful supply of homes for sale at affordable prices, interest rates approaching 40-year lows, and the strong track record of housing as a good long-term investment, conditions are ripe for buyers,” he added. “Those are the facts, plain and simple.”

As for a recession, it’s not happening, Yun said. “A slowdown, yes, but the definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. It’s not in the cards - no matter how you look at it.”

The new real estate boom. Really.

The housing market is still a mess but funds that invest in real estate stocks are on fire this year. Here's why the comeback may be for real.


Oil hit another record high on Friday. So it's no surprise that natural resources mutual funds, funds that invest in energy companies and other plays on surging commodities, are the best performing domestic stock funds this year.

At the same time, real estate news just gets worse and worse, and on Friday, construction of single-family homes fell to a new 17-year low. But guess what the second-best performing fund category is so far this year?

That's right - real estate funds.

TalkBack: Is now a good time to invest in real estate?
Those funds that primarily invest in companies known as real estate investment trusts (REITs) are up more than 7%, according to Morningstar, trailing only the 13% gain in natural resources funds.

What's behind this real estate "boom"?

For starters, it's worth pointing out that real estate funds probably had nowhere to go but up. Many leading REIT indexes were down more than 15% last year.

But now, there are signs that the capital markets are stabilizing, which would continue to help REITs.

"I'd be a fool to say I'm not concerned about the economy and what it means for real estate fundamentals but the group took a big hit last year. If you look at how far it fell, it was probably overdone," said Robert Gadsden, manager of the Alpine Realty Income and Growth fund.

Gadsden said that another reason to like REITs right now is because the Fed's rate cuts have led to lower bond yields and relatively low rates on savings accounts. REITs, however, are required to pay a large chunk of their earnings back to investors as dividends.

"REIT stocks are a good yield play," Gadsden said.

The average dividend yield for the stocks in Gadsden's portfolio is 5.2%, compared to an average of just 2% for the S&P 500 and about 3.9% for a U.S. 10-Year Treasury.

Still, it may be premature to declare that the real estate market, especially for housing, has bottomed.

"The move in REIT stocks is not really about fundamentals. It's a psychological shift. The market wants to call the turn in real estate," said Kevin Means, managing partner with Alpha Equity Management, which subadvises the RidgeWorth Real Estate 130/30 fund.

Means said he's now concerned that there may be "frothiness" in some real estate stocks. However, he seeks to take advantage of that by short-selling some stocks (i.e. borrowing shares and selling them with the hopes of profiting by buying them later at a lower price).

The 130/30 in the fund's name means that he takes 30% of the proceeds he gets from short-selling stocks and uses them to buy more real-estate related stocks. (He is not limited to just buying REITs.) That allows him to have a 130% long position in the sector.

Using a Myrtle beach real estate agent or not?

In the Myrtle Beach, SC area, so many homes are for sale today. If you even remotely have thought about buying, now is the time.

If you've never considered a new home purchase, you might not know where to begin. The first thing you'll need to do is contact a professional lender. Contact one you can trust, one who will not load you up on fees and request a free prequalification.

Then you'll be ready to speak to a qualified real estate agent. Most of you probably think working with a real estate agent will cost you a great deal of money, but this is not the case at all.

Personally, I'll never understand why someone who is about to make the largest purchase in their life would not use the free services of a real estate agent. In a purchase transaction, the seller pays all the fees the real estate agents will receive. The buyer pays nothing.

As a lender, I have heard too many horror stories of those people who attempted to buy a home on their own. Consider the following and then decide if it's a good decision to use a professional real estate agent or not. Take my simple quiz, and the answer to you should be obvious.

1. Do you have the time, energy and contacts to do the home search, price negotiations, home inspection, contract preparation and contract review yourself?

2. Do you feel comfortable dealing with contracts and legal issues, and do you have access to all the contracts needed?

3. Can you honestly determine the true "fair market value" of any home?

4. Can you support your offer or price with facts of home sales in the neighborhood?

5. Do you have the negotiating skills to help negotiate your best price and terms?

6. Do you know what to look for when viewing a home? Do you know the tell-tale signs a home might have a problem?

7. Do you know if any future highway development, landfill or commercial development is planned for the area?

8. Do you know what you can request a seller to fix, what a seller is required to fix and what a seller does not have to fix during the process?

9. Do you know how to handle the situation if you have to sell your home before you can close on your next home?

10. Do you have any formal training or business background in real estate or real estate law?

You see, a real estate transaction is a complicated and time-consuming ordeal. Keep in mind professional real estate agents have done all of this before, and they do it every day of the week. On the other hand, most of us will buy only a few homes in our lifetime.

Even if you have undertaken this type of venture before, laws and regulations change all the time. Don't take the chance of becoming one of those horror stories I'll hear about in the future. To relieve a great deal of stress in your life, take my advice: Having an expert professional real estate agent on your side is critical.

As a leading lender in the area, I have contact with many professional real estate agents on a weekly basis. If you are at all hesitant or unsure about which real estate agent truly is a professional and will work in your best interest, contact me. I'll get you pre-qualified and put you in contact with real estate agents who always seem to go that extra step for each and every family they are involved with.

New Homes posted biggest increase in more than two years

Construction of new homes posted the biggest increase in more than two years in April, a rare spot of good news amid the worst downturn in housing in more than two decades.

The Commerce Department reported Friday that housing construction rose by 8.2 percent in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.03 million units. Building of single-family homes continued to weaken, however. The growth came from a big jump in apartment construction.

Still, the overall gain represented recovery after a steep slump in March building pushed activity to the slowest pace in 17 years.

The surprising rebound was expected to be temporary given the headwinds builders are confronting, from slumping sales to soaring home foreclosures.

The strength in April came entirely from a huge increase in apartment construction, which can be extremely volatile from month to month. Apartment building, defined as two or more units, jumped by 36 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 340,000 units.

The larger single-family sector dropped by 1.7 percent to an annual rate of 692,000 units.

Applications for building permits, considered a good sign of future activity, also recorded an increase in April, rising by 4.9 percent to 978,000 units. It was the first gain in permits in five months.

But economists believe that housing construction will remain under pressure until builders have more success in reducing a huge backlog of unsold homes.

That effort is being made more difficult by a record wave of foreclosures as millions of borrowers lose their homes because they cannot keep up with escalating payments, particularly on subprime mortgages, loans extended to people with weak credit histories.

By region of the country, construction posted the largest gain in the Midwest, an increase of 24.4 percent when compared to March. Construction rose 18.5 percent in the West and was up 3.6 percent in the South. However, construction fell by 12.7 percent in the Northeast.

Even with the improvement, housing construction nationwide was 30.6 percent below the level of activity a year ago.

The National Association of Home Builders reported Thursday that its monthly survey of builder sentiment edged down in May to a reading of 19, just above the all-time low of 18 set in December. The survey had held steady at the low level of 20 from February through April.

David Seiders, the group's chief economist, said that conditions in the industry have continued to deteriorate.