By Jodi Summers

Last week we covered last year’s real estate industry movers and shakers. This week, we offer you our list of candidates for people to watch in 2006:

- Ben Bernanke, incoming Federal Reserve Board Chairman. Bernanke steps in when Alan Greenspan officially leaves the Fed Chief post in late January. Liked by many, stocks soared 160 Dow points in response to his nomination. Most everyone expects he’ll keep his pledge to maintain the Fed’s stance on monetary policy and keeping the system transparent. Bernanke has said he sees price stability “as monetary policy’s greatest contribution to general economic prosperity.”

The 51-year-old former Princeton University professor has served as a Fed governor and is considered one of the country’s top monetary scholars.

“As far as housing, he (Bernanke) recently made a statement that he doesn’t think there’s a housing bubble,” said Doug Duncan, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association. “That was music to our ears. He’s exactly where we are: Some local markets will see adjustment, but nationwide there’s not a bubble.”

“With respect to monetary policy, I will make continuity with the policies and policy strategies of the Greenspan Fed a top priority,” Bernanke noted to the Senate Banking Committee at his confirmation hearing.

- Dale Stinton, CEO of the 1.2 million-member National Association of Realtors. A changing real estate market, a lawsuit with the U.S. Justice Department and tax reform proposals that could dash the mortgage-interest tax deduction are the primary issues Stinton faces in 2006. Currently the NAR is defending itself against a U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawsuit regarding NAR’s policies for the online display of property listings.

In addition, the association is attempting to curb online intermediaries that seek profit from using real estate listings data. Several state realtor groups have backed legislation banning some discount, limited-service real estate business models, prompting opposition from federal antitrust officials. Realtor-owned MLSs in some markets are blocking some types of real estate listings from reaching home-search Web sites such as Realtor.com.

- Craig W. Conrath, counsel, U.S. Justice Department. Conrath is the lead counsel for the Department of Justice in its civil antitrust lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors. The Justice Department’s amended complaint seeks to block the association “from maintaining or enforcing policies that restrain competition from brokers who use the Internet to more efficiently and cost effectively serve home sellers and buyers, and from adopting other related anticompetitive rules.”

NAR filed a motion to dismiss the case in early December and the DOJ has 60 days to respond.

- Jack R. Bierig, Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP. As lead counsel for NAR in the case against the Justice Department, Bierig is defending the real estate trade group’s policies, which anti-trust officials claim restrain trade. NAR’s inside counsel has publicly stated that NAR is prepared to defend its actions in court. They are currently attempting to toss out portions of a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit that target the trade group’s former online listings policy and so-called “opt-out” provisions that allow brokers to withhold the listings from other brokers.

- Justin McCarthy, head of local sales, Google. Google refers more traffic to real estate Web sites than all other search engines combined. McCarthy gets the credit for leveraging Google’s volume of real estate searches and attracting the leading real estate companies as pay-per-click advertising clients.

Google has researched what kind of real estate searches people do on their site, and they discovered more than half of all searches were seeking listings and sales comparables. More than a third are looking for agents.

- Richard Barton, CEO, Zillow.com. Barton and his partner Lloyd Frink were founders of the travel site Expedia.com. Zillow.com, set to debut this year, is their real estate venture.

“We see in real estate right now customers are beginning to take control and habits will start to change,” Barton said. He cites the California Association of Realtors study that concluded that a person using the Internet to research homes averages just under two weeks with a realtor before entering a transaction, while a traditional off-line client spends about seven weeks with an agent.

“Instead of everyone kind of observing the Web, they are contributing to the Web,” Barton notes. “Consumer behavior has changed, and the business model has not changed.”

- Craig Newmark, founder and customer service representative for Craigslist — the online community of local want ads — is the quintessential user-generated content Web site. The site includes classifieds and message boards where people can connect with each other, sell property, find an apartment and find a job.

Newmark founded the first Craigslist site in San Francisco in 1995, and now has expanded to include 190 Craigslist sites in 50 states and 35 countries. Craigslist boasts more than 10 million users per month, and receives more than 3 billion page views per month.

n Real estate bloggers. They show an innovative way of thinking about real estate in the media. They’ve pushed the envelope beyond traditional “experts” writing real estate articles for consumers, and expanded the editorial view to include our view on property and living.

Alex Stenback created the Minneapolis mortgage broker’s blog Behind The Mortgage in 2004 “out of my own frustration,” he said. “There was no good spot to find out what local people were talking about regarding local real estate and mortgages.”

In 2005, he broke a story about FBI investigation into local mortgage fraud. The blog brought in between $3 million and $4 million in mortgage originations in 2005.

(Jodi Summers is director of the investment division at Boardwalk Realty Santa Monica. Contact her at jodis@boardwalkrealty.com, or call 310-309-4219. Visit her community history Web site at www.santamonicalandmarks.com.)