The Housing Bubble

Sanluisobispo.com reports from California. “Foreclosure activity is at its highest level in a dozen years in San Luis Obispo County. Lenders sent county homeowners 653 notices of default from January to July, according to All American Foreclosure Service. That’s up from 296 in the same period a year ago, and 99 notices ahead of the 2006 total of 554.”

“‘It’s rough out there. I haven’t seen it this bad since 1995,’ said Don Vaughn, the owner of All American Foreclosure Service. ‘The bottom line is that people have bought homes that they couldn’t afford.’”

“Foreclosure activity is heavily concentrated in Paso Robles and Nipomo, and to a lesser degree Los Osos and Atascadero.”

“The typical home that is foreclosed on in the county is between $450,000 and $600,000, Vaughn and Lynn Cooper, owner of a firm that also tracks foreclosures. But occasionally, higher-priced homes fall into foreclosure.”

“‘Right now, there are quite a few higher-dollar homes in foreclosure’ in the county, mostly spec homes, Cooper said. ‘These properties take a hit when things get tight.’”

“David Gray, a partner in Mid-State Realty in San Luis Obispo, watches the foreclosure market closely. Gray hasn’t bought any homes recently because the debt owed is often higher than the value of the home.”

“‘It’s just not profitable,’ Gray said. ‘I’ve seen novices come in and they think they are getting a deal, but they get burned.’”

The Daily News. “Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcón sought $5 million in foreclosure assistance Wednesday for residents in danger of losing their homes as the housing market continues to unwind. ‘More people are losing their home today than were lost in the (1994 Northridge) Earthquake,’ Alarcón said.”

“During the second quarter, 2,581 properties went into foreclosure, up from 287 a year earlier, Dataquick reported.”

“Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp…wondered how far the $5 million would stretch. ‘It makes perfect sense, though. People were trying to buy their first house, and they badly stubbed their toe,’ Kyser said.”

The Union Tribune. “San Diego County’s economic outlook has taken a downward plunge, dragged down by a sharp decline in home building, according to a report released yesterday by the University of San Diego.”

“There were 34 percent fewer home-building permits issued in the first half of 2007 than in the same period of 2006. Condominiums and other multi-family units were down 44 percent, compared with a 21 percent drop for single-family home.”

“A report last month from the Monster.com online employment site said that the biggest drop in San Diego want ads was in white-collar jobs.”

The Voice of San Diego. “‘The dominant factor in the local economy remains the slumping housing market, which is negatively impacting employment and income, hurting consumption, and leading to a surge in the number of foreclosures,’ wrote USD economist Alan Gin. ‘Although a full-fledged recession is not likely for San Diego, the possibility is higher than just a few months ago and cannot be discounted.’”

The North County Times. “‘At this point, there appears to be no sign of a turnaround in the near future, with the local economy expected to be weak through at least the early part of 2008,’ Gin stated in the report.”

“The weakness has spread outside the housing market, Gin said. ‘It’s more of the same, but worse,’ he said.”

The Orange County Register. “First American Corp. in Santa Ana today reported a second-quarter loss of $66 million. The title insurer set aside $387 million for expected losses on title insurance policies and other claims. These claims are coming in higher than expected on policies written from 2004 to 2006, the company said.”

“‘The Title Insurance segment continues to focus on margin improvement by centralizing certain administrative activities, reducing headcount and consolidating selected title branches,’ stated CEO Parker S. Kennedy.”

“Accredited Home Lenders, a San Diego-based subprime lender, today said in a filing it may not remain solvent. Here are some of its statements from the annual report: ‘We face significant challenges due to adverse conditions in the non-prime mortgage industry, and we cannot assure you that we will continue to operate as a going concern.’”

“An investor in a company never wants to see the two words ‘going concern’ in a company filing. That’s a blatant reference to solvency.”

The Marin Independent Journal. “Add Mill Valley-based Redwood Trust Inc. to the growing list of public companies buffeted by shock waves from the bursting of the real estate investment bubble. The stock of the real estate investment trust has lost almost half its value over the past two weeks as concern over the breadth and depth of the real estate correction has grown.”

“The company buys jumbo (over $275,000) mortgage loans from top lenders. The loans, about 50 percent of which originate in California, are then placed in a trust.”

“Jim Fowler, a former mortgage industry analyst who is now a managing director with a hedge fund that invests in Redwood, said, ‘The biggest problem in the capital market right now and amongst both lenders and mortgage investors is liquidity.’”

The Santa Cruz Sentinel. “Local lenders are seeing a ripple effect from the shake-up in the mortgage industry resulting from home loans going sour.”

“American Home Mortgage announced Tuesday that its line of credit had been cut off and it was unable to fund loans promised to borrowers. The once fast-growing company established a branch in Santa Cruz in 2004, as the median home price topped $600,000, and employed 18 people.”

“Santa Cruz Mortgage, which had opened an office in Scotts Valley in 2003, closed that office this summer. A staffer said Wednesday the company has 42 employees at four locations.”

“Washington Mutual closed an office in Dublin in the East Bay that handled subprime loans, eliminating 120 jobs.”

“According to the Santa Cruz Record, 425 homeowners in Santa Cruz County have received notices of default for falling behind in their mortgage payments, double the number a year ago, and 226 properties are in foreclosure, triple the figure from a year ago.”

“Local lenders agree the mortgage industry was due for a correction. ‘It’s a return to normal,’ said Tai Boutell, who’s seen the industry go boom and bust in the past eight years. ‘The guidelines were too loose. Unfortunately, some families are feeling it.’”

“Chick Donaldson, with Santa Cruz Financial in Capitola, sees spending habits as part of the problem. When people return to refinance, it’s difficult for them to get better terms if they haven’t cut back on spending and paid down their credit card debt.”

“‘With subprime loans, you get subprime buyers,’ said Donaldson, who has been in lending since 1985. ‘People were getting into things they couldn’t afford.’”

“A total of 164 single-family homes sold in June, the fewest since 2001. ‘It’s really slow now,’ said Charles Thomas, owner of Financial Strategies Mortgage Services in Capitola.”

“Meanwhile, some potential buyers sit on the sidelines, fearful of investing at the wrong time, and that is pushing home prices downward. ‘I see homes for as low as $549,000 now,’ said Thomas. ‘People don’t want to pay $700,000 for something that will be worth $650,000 six months from now.’”

Las Vegas Now reports from Nevada. “The recent troubles in mortgage lending mean foreclosed homes are flooding the market. They’re also making it tougher for other sellers who were hoping to make a profit selling their home. You can usually buy foreclosed homes for less than a regular house for sale. That’s good news for the buyer, but bad news for sellers trying to compete with bank prices.”

“Eyewitness News looked at a five bedroom home in northwest Las Vegas that has never been lived in. It was supposed to be a big help for Kathy and Michael Lowry. Michael Lowry said, ‘Biggest real estate boom in the history of the United States, we couldn’t go wrong. We needed to send our kids through college and we thought it was a great deal.’”

“A year and a half later, they’re still waiting all while continuing to pay their interest-only loan.”

“Kathy Lowry said, ‘The frustration level in our household has been through the roof. And it’s been the first time I’ve had to tell my kids that no, we can’t go to the movies because I’ve got to pay for this house that we are not living in right now that’s not selling.’”

“Eight foreclosure homes in their subdivision, all with similar square footage, have forced the Lowry’s to drop their price. Still, they can’t compete with bank prices of almost $100,000 less than they’re asking.”

“Real estate broker Cameron Yates-DeAngelo said, ‘If you are out looking for a home, which home are you going to select? These folks that are trying to sell their home legitimately, they are taking a hard hit.’”

“The Lowry’s are now looking to rent out the house just to help with payments, but it still won’t be enough. ‘I’m depending now on my retirement, which is being bled down and I won’t even have that money as an option for college because it’s basically become a money pit here.’ said Michael Lowry.”

“Eyewitness News is taking a closer look at how the nation slump in the housing market is affecting the Las Vegas Valley. It’s estimated that close to 30-percent of the homes on the local market right now are foreclosed homes.”

“Recently, one of the top zip codes for foreclosures in the nation was in North Las Vegas zip code 89031.”

“In just about every neighborhood throughout valley you will find for sale signs. Many of the homes that are on the market have gone through foreclosure. For sale signs are becoming more like yard ornaments at homes in some neighborhoods.”

A report from the Arizona Republic. “A planned condominium project in central Phoenix has irked area residents, who say the developer’s lackadaisical approach to demolishing the site’s former buildings has contributed to neighborhood crime.”

“CEO Jonathan Larmore says the development, Residence at the Grove, will be a more affordable alternative to the multimillion-dollar condos that currently dot the Biltmore corridor. Units would be priced from $440,000 to $850,000, he said.”

“Residents already are angry with Larmore because, they say, the company took too long to demolish the medical offices and clean up debris. Arciterra Group received the first of its demolition permits from the city Feb. 6 but did not complete the razing of the buildings until late last month.”

“In the interim, residents say, at least one of the buildings sat half-demolished, attracting vagrants who committed crimes there. ‘It looked like a war zone,’ said Holly Rye, who lives near the site.”

The Tucson Citizen from Arizona. “July has come and gone and nothing is happening on the Congress Street empty lot where construction should have started on The Post lofts. Bourn Partners in spring indicated construction on the six-story, 52-unit complex would start ’sometime in July.’”

“Tucson’s overall real estate market has staggered this year. Ron Schwabe, a former partner in the 44 Broadway Lofts, said a few months back that the national picture impacts downtown Tucson and had slowed the 44 Broadway project.”

“In prior interviews, Turner hinted reservations were never robust at The Post. In the past and now, he never disclosed how many reservations were placed other than saying in December that the number is ‘better than we expected. We haven’t sold out by any means.’”

“John Strobeck, author of the Tucson Housing Market Letter, is not surprised with the reticence. ‘Downtown is such a crapshoot,’ Strobeck said. ‘Everybody was depending on a good program (with Rio Nuevo). Now the confidence of anything happening is so low there is no confidence of any investors. There’s a lot of people sitting on the sideline saying, ‘If they would have done something, I’d be pitching.’”

“Ann Vargas, the city’s downtown housing coordinator, prefers to use the term ‘chess game’ to describe the challenges to find buyers for downtown condos.”

“‘You can’t hold somebody by the hand and take them into a loft and show them, ‘Here’s what you’re going to get,’ Vargas said. ‘Until you’re really ready to sell, it’s really hard to push on something that’s going to be built in a year or two out.’”

“Strobeck said the local condo market, whether conversions from apartment or new condo units, is unremarkable. ‘Condo conversions are dying right now if you’re not around the university or District 16 (the Catalina foothills),’ Strobeck said.”

The Transcript Bulletin from Utah. “The number of houses sold in Tooele County plummeted 17.3 percent during the second quarter of 2007 compared to the second quarter of 2006, according to statistics from the Wasatch Front Regional MLS.”

“After only a 5 percent increase in the average sales price for houses during 2005, sales values jumped 26.4 percent during the second quarter of 2006, a period during which the average home price increased form $137,333 to $172,601.”

“Tooele’s ReMax Platinum owner Dan Egelund said the real estate market in the Tooele Valley has recovered during the past two years after going through a rough period. ‘Home prices will still increase but at a more gradual pace than they have in the past,’ Egelund predicted.”

“He said that four or five years ago some homeowners faced foreclosures and were eager to get out of their homes. The sudden and substantial increase in home values has made foreclosures almost non-existent in Tooele County because people have been able to sell quickly at higher prices the past two years.”

“Egelund said home buyers are lured to Tooele County because sales prices are still extremely low compared to Salt Lake County prices. As an example, he said a four-bedroom, two-bath home in Salt Lake Valley listed at $291,782 in June. A similar four-bedroom, two-bath home in Tooele County was listed at $198,310.”

“‘We still have wide-open spaces in Tooele County. Water is an issue, but there is still plenty of developable land,’ Egelund said.”

The Rock Town Weekly reports from Virginia. “Heidi Sallee and her husband, Dave, have done most of the things required to sell a house. The 3,000-square-foot house in Lakewood has been on the market since mid-May and Dave starts a job at Radford University near Blacksburg the second week in August. Initially the house was priced at $389,900 but the Sallees dropped the price to $359,900.”

“‘We’re renting in Blacksburg,’ Sallee said. ‘We don’t want to buy until we sell this house.’”

“The Sallees are sellers in a buyer’s market. And the buyers are reluctant, said Sallye Trobaugh, president of the Harrisonburg Rockingham Association of Realtors. ‘I think the market in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County is recovering,’ Trobaugh said. ‘But consumer confidence is wavering because of the national news of a housing slump.’”

“Trobaugh suggests pricing the home according to other houses that are being sold and consider the time frame. ‘If you need to sell immediately, price it in the lowest range you can,’ she said. Pricing in the higher range in a buyer’s market is risky, she added.”

“‘People look at the house and look at it and then they stop looking,’ Trobaugh said. ‘And then you’ve hurt yourself.’”

“‘In Winchester and Northern Virginia, there were dozens of national builders who overbuilt,’ said Matthew Robertson, president and partner of Stratford Companies Inc.”

“Harrisonburg and Rockingham County has a good number of homes priced above $600,000, which are slower to sell, says Rodney Williams of Coldwell Banker Funkhouser Realtors. ‘I had a home listed at nearly $1 million. The owner got an offer for $800,000 and didn’t take [it],’ Williams said. ‘Now the home is listed at $699,000.’”

“The high-end market tends to see less movement, Trobaugh said. High-priced existing homes also are competing with new construction, she added. ‘If I’m going to spend $900,000 on a house,’ she said. “The thinking is, ‘Why not build exactly what I want?’”

The Examiner from Virginia. “Fairfax County saw five times the number of home foreclosures in the first half of 2007 as it had during the same period last year, according to county figures. ‘Fairfax, basically, is not immune from what’s going on in the rest of the country,’ said Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates.”

“Rheingold said the issue is rooted in the popular misconception that lenders won’t qualify people for loans they don’t have the ability to pay for. ‘Time and again, there were loans being made that people could not afford,’ he said. ‘Now it’s all coming home to roost.’”

The Connection from Virginia. “There were only seven homes listed as foreclosed under a Herndon address throughout 2006 according to a real estate database run by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, Inc. But as the national housing market began to cool off and homes began to sit on the market for longer periods, the dust of the regional real estate boom began to settle.”

“‘Foreclosures used to only traditionally happen when you had to face death, bankruptcy or divorce,’ said real estate agent Jeff Shumaker. ‘But now we’re starting to see all over that it’s no longer the case. People with jobs, with family incomes are starting to default throughout the whole area.’”

“In the first six months of 2007, there have already been 51 properties listed as foreclosed in Herndon, according to real estate figures. As some agents do not list their homes as foreclosed outright, that number is ‘more realistically 70 to 80,’ said Schumaker.”

“‘People were buying at the height of the market and they were getting into these loans that they just couldn’t afford,’ he said. ‘It was the people who got loans who had no ability to pay off these loans, that’s who we are seeing popping up in these foreclosures.’”

“Five years ago, with residential and commercial expansion drenching the local economy with new jobs and housing options, the easiest investment in the world to a number of area residents appeared to be in real estate, Shumaker said.”

“‘It blew up very quickly, the property value escalated at a huge rate,’ he said. ‘Everyone was buying into this pipe dream that they were going to be rich overnight through property ownership.’”

“And when some lenders began to take notice of the land grab, ‘unethical practices’ were brought into play, according to Shumaker.”

“‘You had people who had no business getting mortgages, and these lenders were filling out their applications for them, putting down whatever it took to get them approved,’ Shumaker said.”

‘”These people would have never received their mortgages if they would have filed them normally. They were giving out loans to anybody with a heartbeat.’”

“‘You now have an industry that has basically imploded on itself,’ said Shumaker. ‘When the market came down, tons of jobs in the [construction] industry were lost, drying up a large amount of the cash used to pay mortgages.’”

“And the growing immigrant and Hispanic population, many of whom were depending on home construction and related jobs as a main source of income, faced the brunt of the deflating housing balloon. More than half of the foreclosed homes in Herndon that Shumaker has sold over the course of the year belonged to Hispanic residents.”

“‘I saw definitely that there was predatory lending, and that the Hispanic families were being targeted,’ said Jorge Figueredo, president of a regional bank catering to the Hispanic population.”

“While working as the executive director of the Hispanic Committee of Virginia five years ago, Figueredo and others recognized these practices and worked with other non-profit and Hispanic groups to set up safe home-buying seminars. ‘One thing is what you desire, but another is what you can afford’ was our motto,’ he said.”

From NBC4.com. “Real estate experts said too many condominiums are being built, and too much inventory is forcing prices down. On Massachusetts Avenue, new condos are under construction just around the block from condos that have been on the market two years.”

“A new report by Delta Associates found there are more than 20,000 new condos for sale in the D.C. area. The report said another 18,000 are brought on the market every three years.”

“William Rich, Delta’s vice president, said buyers backing out are hurting sales.”

“Experts said Maryland is also facing a condo glut. Of the 600 new residential units at Rockville Square…most are being offered as rentals.”

The Miami New Times reports from Florida. “Crossing the Lehman Causeway into Sunny Isles Beach, you might wonder if you’ve been sucked into an interstate wormhole in the space-time continuum and landed in downtown Miami. Construction cranes perch atop a skyline that, though dominated by high-rises, still strains upward. Lucy Collins purchased her apartment at the low-slung Kings Point Imperial, in late 2005 when the market was hot. ‘You can’t go wrong buying this property,’ she remembers being told.”

“Thanks to an adjustable rate mortgage, she now pays almost twice what she used to spend on rent for a similar apartment, more than $2000 a month, and the bill is rising.”

“‘I’ve already borrowed $12,000 on my credit cards just to keep going,’ Collins says. She is even considering cashing in her IRA, as well as looking for a job at Home Depot. ‘Instead of working less as I get older, I’m having to work more. I want out. I’m thinking I would just leave the state.’”

The Sun Sentinel. “Marge Dwyer was in ‘total shock’ when she heard she wouldn’t be getting the money to pay off her mortgages. The Maryland native, who lives here seven months out of the year, was to receive more than $1 million for her two mobile homes in the (Briny Breezes) seaside community.”

“‘It’s horrible,’ she said. ‘I still can’t believe it’s happening.’”

“The $510 million deal fell through Monday after the town refused to give Ocean Land an extension on an Aug. 10 deadline and the developer pulled out of the deal. Between her two units, Dwyer would have made about $1.6 million on the sale.”

“She planned to pay off about $1 million she owed on three properties in Delaware, three in Maryland and a condo in Delray Beach. ‘I’m mortgaged up to my eyeballs,’ Dwyer said. ‘I’m going to have to start selling [my properties] off just to survive.’”

The Palm Beach Post. “The $510 million Briny Breezes deal, which fell apart yesterday, always had more than its share of surreal touches. For starters, there was the incongruity of a trailer park nestled amid some of the priciest oceanfront land in the world. Then there was the idea of deep-pocketed developers securing a $510 million deal for an entire town with nothing more than a $500,000 deposit.”

“Silver-haired Briny residents visiting the Post’s editorial board recently and swearing up and down that they didn’t want to sell, but they voted to sell anyway. One even broke down in tears, in between trying to figure out how to make her BlackBerry stop ringing.”

“Looking to scoop up some prime Miami Beach real estate? This could be your year. Nine properties valued at a million dollars or more have gone into foreclosure on the Beach since the beginning of 2007.”

“According to research, these include a prime, vacant 10,500 square foot waterfront lot on Hibiscus Island ($3 million) as well as several condos that haven’t even been completed.”

The Herald Tribune. “Foreclosure filings during the first half of 2007 totaled 2,303 in Sarasota County, up 198 percent from the same period last year. Manatee and Charlotte counties also posted increases of more than 100 percent for the time frame, RealtyTrac reported.”

The News Journal. “In a sign that deterioration of the Volusia-Flagler area housing market may be accelerating, foreclosure activity on local homes soared in the first half of the year at rates far exceeding the troubling increases nationally and statewide.”

“The number of foreclosure-related filings shot up 156 percent in Volusia County from the first six months last year to 2,623 in the first half this year, according to Realtytrac. In much less populous Flagler County, the total number of filings was smaller, 600 in the first half this year, but represented a staggering 408 percent increase over the year-earlier pace, the company said.”

The News Press. “Housing permits in Cape Coral fell to their lowest level in more than a decade in July, according to a city report released Wednesday. Meanwhile, activity in unincorporated Lee County slowed drastically following a surge in June caused by a deadline to avoid the tripling of road impact fees.”

“In Cape Coral, only 45 permits were pulled for single-family homes last month, a far cry from the 858 recorded in March 2006 at the height of Southwest Florida’s real estate boom.”

From Florida Today. “The pain in the local housing market isn’t limited to Realtors and people trying to sell their homes. Construction workers also are getting their share. Brevard County has lost a big chunk of its construction jobs during the past year, as a result of the slumping housing sector.”

“‘We recently merged our Space Coast and Palm Bay divisions in response to reduced demand in the current housing market,’ said David Barin, president of Mercedes’ Space Coast Division. ‘Like other builders, we have had to lay off and transfer some employees as the industry searches for equilibrium.’”

“Martin Carrizales was laid off with other workers last week from his job as a roof designer after 11 years. ‘They just told us one day, and we were gone,’ said Carrizales. ‘They said, ‘It’s just the market. No one’s building, no one’s buying.’”

“The number of mortgage foreclosures in Brevard has continued to rise, with 385 foreclosure filings in June, the most for any month in at least 51/2 years, according to the Brevard County Clerk of Courts. During the first half of 2007, there were 1,975 mortgage foreclosures filed with the clerk’s office, compared with 1,144 for all of 2005 and 1,868 for all of 2006.”

“Alan Hunter, a housing market analyst with Metrostudy in West Palm Beach, expects housing prices in South Florida to continue to fall for another year, in some places as much as an additional 20 to 30 percent, stemming from artificially inflated prices and an excess of housing construction. ‘Prices just got way out of line with what people could afford,’ Hunter said.”

“The median single-family home resale price in Brevard fell from a peak of $248,700 in August 2005 to $198,000 in June, a 20 percent drop.”

The Times Union. “The St. Joe Co. reported an operating loss for the second quarter Tuesday, as the slumping housing market reduced demand for the company’s residential real estate projects. St. Joe reported a loss from continuing operations of $5.3 million, or 7 cents a share.”

“‘It was a difficult quarter, reflecting the current market,’ said CEO Peter Rummell. ‘It’s a tough time for the housing industry nationally, and it’s tough in Florida,’ he said.”

“While St. Joe officials expressed optimism about the future, Wachovia Securities analyst Christopher Haley expressed caution for the short term in a research note Tuesday. ‘We note that such optimism has been offered by management in the recent past, only to have the existing weak market conditions persist longer than expected,’ Haley said.”

From Florida Trend. “Some owners are paying the price for homes built in a hurry during the boom years. In addition to contractor abandonment cases, Florida is seeing a rash of construction defect and delay cases as the housing boom deflates, according to attorneys around the state.”

“‘Because so much was going up so quickly, you had subcontractors on the job who didn’t have experience building a 30- or 40-story high-rise on the ocean,’ says Stacy Bercun Bohm, a construction attorney in Fort Lauderdale. ‘You had subcontractors here from other parts of the country getting in on the boom, but they had no experience with environmental factors such as salt air and the humidity here.’”

“Some cases may represent desperate attempts by condo investors to get out of preconstruction contracts by claiming substandard work. But many involve contractors who cut corners as costs boomed and the housing market began to wane.”

“Orlando home inspector Richard Tan says the situation is the same inland. He tells story after story of substandard work by both custom luxury builders and cookie-cutter home building corporations. ‘My reports used to be 20 to 30 pages long, but lately they’ve been hitting 50 to 60 pages,’ he says. ‘And these are brand-spanking-new homes.’”

The Orlando Sentinel. “Central Florida’s only publicly held financial institution posted its first loss in more than a decade Tuesday, falling into a multimillion-dollar hole triggered by real-estate failures in Florida’s slumping housing market.”

“It was the latest hit Federal Trust has taken during the past year as fallout from the housing slump has taken its toll on the banking industry. The thrift’s profit fell more than 65 percent in the first quarter after a 23 percent decline in 2006. It was the 17th-largest bank in the region in 2006.”

“‘Federal Trust and a lot of other smaller banks are probably suffering more than bigger banks right now,’ said Rod Jones, an Orlando banking lawyer and a former state regulator. ‘But even the big players such as Bank of America and Wachovia are being hit hard. And we may not have seen the bottom of that yet either.’”

“Florida’s economy, and thus the state government’s finances, is in worse shape than predicted and will take a longer time to turn around, state economists revealed Wednesday. The state is not in a recession, economists said, but only because that’s a term they reserve for describing national fiscal woes.”

“Amy Baker, coordinator of the Florida Legislature’s Bureau of Economic and Demographic Research, said of the state’s economy: ‘By almost any way you calculate it, if you looked at the housing market and all its related pieces, the finance piece, the Realtor piece, the building piece and the sales piece, by pretty much any measure, that is akin to a recession. It’s just we don’t define it that way.’”

“The economists blamed Florida’s troubled real-estate market, saying sales of existing homes and housing starts are down, which keeps the overall economy stagnant.”

“Worse, they said, there is no sign of a recovery before 2009. ‘While Florida is not in a recession, it looks very much like a recession,’ state economist Frank Williams said. ‘We’re not expecting to see a big comeback like you would coming out of a recession.’”

“‘There won’t be a day, there won’t be a ‘Eureka’ moment but more of a period of time,’ said economist Amy Baker. ‘This will be a fairly long adjustment.’”

The Tallahassee Democrat. “Baker said Florida’s housing boom was bigger and longer-running than most states enjoyed. Therefore, she said, the correction has been a longer, steeper fall that looks likely to last a while.”

“‘It was a windfall or a boom, we were in a bubble,’ she said after the conference meeting, ’so you’re seeing the growth rates in a bubble that were not sustainable, ever. This was inevitable.’”

The St Petersburg Times. “Throughout the past couple of years, Tampa was tops at producing happy workers. How the mighty have fallen. The Hudson Employment Index, which tracks worker confidence in 11 major cities, ranked Tampa second to last in its July measurements.”

“What’s turned us into such pessimists? ‘It’s got to be something related to the whole real estate market,’ says Fritz Eichelberger, who runs (a) local techie networking group. ‘Companies here don’t want to pay any money,’ said David Rudd, a business development specialist at Manpower in Tampa, ‘and the government wants to charge more money to live here’ in property taxes.”

The Naples News. “There’s no arguing that this is a tough time to be in the real estate business. Inventory is up, sales are down and agents are finding themselves with way more free time than they’d like to have. But some say there is good news to be had if you look closely enough.”

“‘People have to understand that if they bought for $150,000 several years ago and had it listed for $450,000, and now in order to sell they have to sell for $350,000, they did not lose $100,000,’ said Realtor Joe Pavich Sr in Estero.”

“Of course, making a profit under that scenario assumes the seller didn’t use his home equity ‘like a debit card’ a few years ago when interest rates were at historic lows and property values were at historic highs, he added.”

“And Realtors say buyers are out there, they’re just hovering until they feel confident the market has reached bottom.”

“‘My impression is there’s a huge pent-up market of buyers out there, but they’re all waiting for the media to say something positive before they jump in,’ said Wes Brodersen, broker in Bonita Springs.”

“Brodersen believes much of the blame for the current market belongs on the shoulders of the media. ‘I’m beginning to believe the media actually has an agenda with this,’ he said. ‘The market we’re in now started two years ago, but I’ve been reading about it for three years. Can you say self-fulfilling prophecy?’”

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