February 2024 Industry Speakers

Industry Speakers

Mark Palim
Vice President and Deputy Chief Economist
Fannie Mae
 Dr. Mark Palim is Vice President and Deputy Chief Economist at Fannie Mae. He oversees the teams responsible for Fannie Mae’s macroeconomic and housing forecasts and the National Housing Survey. His team has won the Lawrence R. Klein Award for Blue Chip Forecast Accuracy and, on two occasions, the NABE Outlook Award.

In addition, Mark leads a team of economists who conduct in-depth research on issues affecting housing affordability, including the first work at the company on climate change. This research has informed Fannie Mae strategy and resulted in publications in peer-reviewed journals.
John Hunt
President
MarketNSight & ViaSearch
  

John Hunt is the Chief Analyst and Principal of MarketNsight, providing market analysis for 35 markets across the Southeast. With over 30 years’ experience in the housing industry, his emphasis has been on both qualitative and quantitative analysis which has led to extremely accurate modeling and forecasting. John was part of the team that predicted the 2007 housing recession in September of 2005. John is on the leading edge of Millennial and Active Adult buying trends and was one of the first to signal housings “New Normal” where empty nesters took over as the largest group of new home buyers after the downturn. John also accurately predicted the dramatic loss of First Time Buyers after 2013 and tied it to the disappearance of distressed building lots.

At the June 2019 MarketWatch Atlanta event, he was the first in the nation to call the bottom of the 2018/2019 housing collapse. In his recent analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic, John was the first in the nation to call a bottom in housing during the early weeks of the pandemic on April 21st, 2020.

John is a highly sought-after speaker on the economy and real estate and is regularly quoted and published as a housing expert in local and national publications and news outlets, including CNN, FOX, Money INC, Bloomberg, Builder Magazine, The AJC and the Atlanta Business Chronicle.John is a regular speaker on the economy and real estate at the nationally covered Georgia State University Economic Forecasting Center and the largest semi-annual event for the Georgia Housing Industry (MarketWatch) since 2006. He has spoken at IBS every year since 2018.