Keep up the good-enough work, Mr. President

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. real estate executives, at the epicenter of the global financial crisis, give passing marks to President Barack Obama's administration for its handling of the crisis so far.

But they have a few pointers, too.

Guests at the Reuters Global Real Estate Summit in New York this week largely agreed that policymakers have faced an unprecedented set of challenges and are doing the best they can. But these experts also faulted the administration for its communication of new initiatives, for creating fresh levels of red tape and for not doing enough to spur homebuying.

Obama gets a 'B' grade for facing a momentous challenge head-on, for intervening early and in a big way, said Allen Smith, chief executive of Prudential Financial Inc's real estate investment management and advisory business.

Smith said one should appreciate the human dimension of working "ridiculous hours" to tackle the crisis, but said questions remain over how to eventually reverse the stimulus without undermining the recovery.

Several speakers, including Richard Dugas, chief executive of Pulte Homes Inc (PHM.N), said they would have preferred a bigger tax credit as part of the $800 billion stimulus package in February. An $8,000 first-time homebuyer credit has been effective, he said. One that was double the size, and which applied to all homebuyers, would be even more so.

But Dugas noted the Administration deserves credit for tackling an unprecedented level of problems and doing it in a fairly methodical manner.

"I do think they inherited a series of problems that's unprecedented here and have done their best to stabilize things," Dugas told the summit. He added that the intervention to prop up government housing agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "were clearly needed."

Real estate broker Darcy Stacom, of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc (CBG.N), said it was hard to criticize from afar actions taken at what could be the most unique time in history. She cited her 90-year-old father who, after 60 years in the real estate business, told her he had "never seen anything like it."

"I don't want to sit back and be an armchair quarterback and say I have a clue, because I wouldn't want to be sitting at that desk," Stacom said of the Administration.

The team at the Federal Reserve, meanwhile, deserves kudos for learning on the fly.

"What has been asked of them is almost incredibly difficult -- to get into the minutiae of many, many, many different securities markets, and come up with policy initiatives," said analyst Richard Parkus of Deutsche Bank. "It's an incredibly difficult problem."

TREACHEROUS SITUATION

Some sharper criticism came from Steven Tanger, CEO of Tanger Factory Outlet Centers Inc (SKT.N), who said Washington has introduced new levels of bureaucracy with no clear evidence yet that stimulus money is having a positive impact.

Tanger said the Troubled Asset Relief Program, for which former President Bush's team deserves some credit, appears to have stopped a severe economic crisis, and smartly provided a mechanism for getting money back to taxpayers. But he added: "We haven't seen how we are going to pay for all of this yet."

President Obama's team has made no major errors, unlike past administrations that tackled crises by doing precisely the wrong things, said lawyer Rick Jones of Dechert LLP. But it can be faulted for creating an air of uncertainty for the real estate industry.

"They haven't done anything that is awful, except not be able to execute on plans, which has created this continuous wave of uncertainty, which has definitely been a drag on the business," Jones said. "That will be one of the principal villains of this mess, that uncertainty."

To some extent, one has to forgive policy makers for any mistakes they've made, or are going to make, said Tom Shapiro, president and founder of GoldenTree InSite Partners, a real estate investor.

"I don't think we ever and certainly in my lifetime I've never seen such a treacherous and complicated situation," Shapiro said.

"They're kind of doing what they can to fix it, and they won't get it right the first time, nobody will."

(Reporting by Nick Zieminski, editing by Patrick Fitzgibbons and Tim Dobbyn; nick.zieminski@thomsonreuters.com)