Where some may squabble, analysts go on about business

By Brendan Buhler

Monday, July 7, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Two weeks ago, a column ran under the byline of John Restrepo, a column purporting to peer into the future of commercial real estate in Las Vegas through 2008. The vast majority of the forecast was either a word-for-word ripoff or light rephrasing of a two-month-old report by Jeremy Aguero, a competing real estate analyst.

Minor outrage ensued. Restrepo apologized to Aguero, saying the column was written by a ghostwriter and Restrepo didn’t look it over before it went out. Restrepo wouldn’t identify the ghostwriter. Aguero says he hasn’t decided whether to sue.

You might think this brouhaha would have set the world of Las Vegas analysts atwitter: a cat fight within their ranks.

Especially because they were the most quoted of Las Vegas real estate analysts, with the possible exception of UNLV’s Keith Schwer. When real estate was up, Restrepo and Aguero were there to assure readers it would keep going up. And since it’s gone down, they’ve explained this momentary perturbation as a necessary but temporary correction.

It’s not true that they’re the only analysts in town, of course. They are only the most-quoted ones.

But it is a very small world. There are, depending on whom you ask, a dozen or two real estate analysts.

(It depends on what makes a Las Vegas real estate analyst. Do you include out-of-towners? Only full-time real estate analysts? Public policy analysts who dabble in real estate? What about non-real estate analysts who know real estate analysts? These are the kinds of questions analysts ask when they analyze analysts. And none of them agrees.)

This is how small their world is: Aguero used to intern for Restrepo, before competing with him. And even while competing, they worked together, on and off, for a couple of years. But not anymore.

People in this small world say it was not an amicable parting.

“They compete for the same type of work. You’re probably not going to hear either one of them saying nice things about the other one,” said Dennis Smith, president and chief executive of Home Builders Research.

Off the record, people say the parting was harsher and reflects on one or the other’s loyalty and integrity. But that’s off the record.

On the record, you hear from Restrepo, “We just went separate directions, as often happens.”

And everyone who said, off the record, that it wasn’t amicable and was happy to say which party was at fault, will, on the record, say the same thing Restrepo did.

That’s because nobody wants to upset anyone else in this small world.

“My favorite saying is, ‘be friends with your competitors because you never know when your competitor is going to be your colleague,’ ” said real estate consultant Steve Bottfeld, who knows both men. “It’s a small business. Most people don’t have big fights.”

But how will this play out in the community of analysts? What, come to that, is the community of analysts like?

We asked respected public policy analyst Guy Hobbs, president of Hobbs, Ong & Associates.

“It’s a very glamorous world, economic analysis,” he said.

Really? Is there an analysts association and an annual ball?

No and no, Hobbs said.

“And if we had some kind of gathering, frankly, that would be the last place in the world you would find me.”

But what about the real estate analysts? We asked Larry Murphy, president of Salestraq, who’s been a Las Vegas analyst since 1978.

“Frankly, I don’t care,” Murphy said. “I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

Opinions sometimes differ, so we asked another analyst.

“To me, it’s funny,” Dennis Smith said. “I’ll be laughing about it after I hang up.”