This week, Bruce Norris is joined by Chief Economist and Director of Research for the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University, Dr. Mark Dotzour. Bruce and Dr. Dotzour discuss how global trends have affected residential real estate, how interest rates are determined, how central banks have lost some control over monetary policy, how the lending industry is changing, how lenders found out the ultimate way to protect themselves from risk, bond agencies missing that risk, how the U.S. has exported some toxic paper and why it worked, the ramification of downgraded ratings, the credit crunch, how the U.S. just started seeing the damage from the mortgage market, how March will bring more realistic news, foreign investors, China and credit securities, real estate boom in foreign markets, what our interest rate should really by in the current market, how the U.S. would see higher interest rates, inflation in the U.S., recession and effects on Asia, stagflation and comparison to past cycles, why real estate is in demand as an asset, and Texas prices.
Dr. Mark G. Dotzour is the Chief Economist and Director of Research for the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. He earned his Ph.D. in the Department of Finance at the University of Texas at Austin in 1987 and served as Associate Professor of Real Estate and Finance at Wichita State University for 10 years. As Chief Economist, he is currently doing market research to monitor how global and national trends are likely to impact residential and commercial real estate markets.
Prior to his academic career, he was president of Gleneagles Development, Inc., developing residential subdivisions in Wichita, Kansas. He also served as president of Dotzour Inc., Realtors, which was a residential brokerage firm in Wichita.
He has been at the Real Estate Center since August, 1997. Since then, he has published 59 articles in magazines and given over 700 presentations to more than 90,000 people. His research findings and comments have been published in the Wall Street Journal , Money Magazine, USA Today and Business Week. He was a recent guest on the Jim Lehrer Newshour on PBS.