A Real-Estate Driven Economy
The Sun Sentinel reports from Florida. “Alice Gordon was getting ready to put her villa up for sale in Palm Isles, but she’s decided to wait. She wants to move into independent living, but Alice is putting her move on hold because of the flat real estate market. How long was she told it would take to sell her place? ‘Forever,’ she said, laughing.”
“Alice’s scenario is played out across the swath of retirement communities, especially in western Delray Beach, where people bought condos decades ago. Now many of them are trapped, unable to move because they can’t sell unless they significantly drop their price.”
“‘The real estate market is making it extremely difficult for residents who want to go into assisted living or go up to be by their children,’ said Bob Schulbaum, longtime president of the Alliance of Delray Residential Associations. ‘They’re tapping their savings to bring in aides.’”
“Luckily, that’s not the case with Alice, whose villa is paid off, so she can afford to wait.”
“Bob sees other problems. Condos sit empty after a relative dies when the heirs can’t sell it. The lack of turnover is being felt. ‘The older communities, especially, need new blood,’ he said. ‘Where are the worker bees going to come from?’”
“Barbara Katz, president of the coalition west of Boynton Beach said she agrees with Bob about the real estate market. ‘More people are feeling the crunch,’ she said.”
“People are late paying their maintenance fees. Homeowners who have to sell are forced to reduce their prices, and she’s seeing a few foreclosures. ‘You very rarely saw that,’ she said.”
The Herald Tribune from Florida. “The same group of colorful Californians who bought 15 units at the Bermuda on Osprey condo complex in Sarasota at inflated prices attempted at least three similar deals in Lakewood Ranch.”
“Two of the sellers, who approached the Herald-Tribune with their stories, said the deals smelled fishy from the start. But the real estate agents and the lawyers they called for advice said it would be OK to proceed as long as all details of the transactions were spelled out to the banks providing the financing.”
“To some critics, the fact that real estate agents, appraisers, mortgage brokers, title agents and lawyers all sign off on the legitimacy of such transactions goes to the heart of the problems facing the U.S. real estate and mortgage industries.”
“‘Realtors and mortgage brokers were thinking about commissions. Appraisers, title agents and lawyers were thinking about fees,’ said Erroll Phillips, a Manatee County Realtor and real estate instructor. ‘The victim is not just the banks. It is all of us.’”
The Miami Herald from Florida. “Miami’s former building boom, has become Miami’s building bargain, one city commissioner says. And Commissioner Marc Sarnoff says the best thing for government to do is just what any savvy shopper would: buy, buy, buy.”
“The commissioner says if prices dip as low as $175 per square foot, government should purchase condo units and partially subsidize them for teachers, police officers and the like.”
“Community activist Max Rameau worries that Sarnoff’s proposal could become a taxpayer bailout for condo developers who overestimated demand and are now having trouble selling their units. Sarnoff says government wouldn’t be bailing out developers, just taking advantage of a good deal. But if the idea helped stabilize the shaky real estate market a bit, Sarnoff said, that’s not a bad thing.”
“‘This is a real-estate driven economy,’ he said. Allow a collapse to happen and ‘people won’t be making a living. There are title companies. There are real estate agents.’”
“A government-assisted buyer program could fill up struggling condo buildings, Miami state Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera said, though he added there is a risk that buyers who paid full price will resist the new, subsidized, arrivals.”
“Sarnoff says mixing people of different incomes is a laudable goal, something Miami should do more of. ‘Instead of warehousing the working-class poor, let’s put them amongst the middle class,’ Sarnoff said. ‘Not overload the building, but five or 10 here and there.’”
From My Fox Atlanta in Georgia. “For the past 13 years, Michelle and Raymond Beardon have enjoyed living in their Loganville home, but when they got back from vacation this past July, they were in for a big surprise.”
“‘Actually have mail, tons of mail and we open up the first piece of mail and it was actually a foreclosure notice out of the newspaper,’ said homeowner Michelle Bearden.”
“The Beardens had decided to refinance their home in 1999. They blame their lender for their current trouble, claiming their monthly mortgage payments were incorrectly credited to their account. They’re now suing the mortgage company.”
“‘It’s devastating to find out that way you are being foreclosed on,’ said Beardon.”
“There have been over 53,000 foreclosures in metro Atlanta in 2007, some 6,800 properties were foreclosed on in October 2007 alone.”
The Atlanta Journal Constitution from Georgia. “The white paint has barely dried on the cathedral ceilings. And some of the stacked-stone chimneys have yet to crackle with that first fire. Here, in a half-built neighborhood near Grayson, everything is freshly minted, down to the suburban dreams.”
“Yet earlier this month, outside the Gwinnett County courthouse, nearly half the subdivision was auctioned off — the latest casualty of a foreclosure crisis that has pounded model-home sales offices around metro Atlanta.”
“‘Going once, going twice, sold to Legacy State Bank,’ attorney Samuel L. Chesnutt shouted to a crowd of investors showing little interest.”
“A few were unsold homes. Most were vacant lots. All went to a buyer with no home-owning dreams. ‘We expect to see a lot more of that, to be honest,’ said Domonic Purviance, a senior consultant with Metrostudy.”
“The building gloom is a stunning reversal for one of this decade’s hottest Zip codes for new-home construction in metro Atlanta. Even now, by all outward appearances, this corner of Gwinnett is still bursting at the seams. Road crews are widening traffic-clogged Ga. 20. Another middle school is under construction. Subdivisions are sprouting up around every corner. But peek into many of those new houses, and there’s something missing: people.”
“Metro Atlanta has 140,000 vacant lots, Purviance said. That’s a nearly four-year supply, or double what’s normal for the region. And nobody is in a hurry to build on top of them. The supply of unoccupied new homes has soared and is now twice the usual three-month inventory.”
“‘People paid premium prices for land,’ Purviance said. ‘But the prices were a little inflated. The developers are stuck now.’”
“So are homeowners like Mark Braswell, who moved into Chandler Woods Estates last July. From his cul-de-sac lot, he expected to see property values rise with each new home. But sales slowed. And construction nearly ground to a halt.”
“Last month, ‘Reduced’ stickers joined the ‘For Sale’ signs that lined Cattail Ives Road. Then, on a record-setting Tuesday for foreclosures in Georgia, the signs disappeared altogether. The properties went to the bank that issued the construction loans in the first place.”
“Braswell fears the lots will end up in the hands of a builder who brings a cheaper product to the neighborhood, where homes currently are priced from the high $200,000s to the mid $300,000s.”
“‘It leaves us very vulnerable to whatever comes in,’ he said.”
The Birmingham News from Alabama. “Record low unemployment rates and economic development coups have done little to curtail bankruptcy filings across Alabama. Instead, a rush of foreclosures and surging debt consumer loads have pushed Alabama’s personal bankruptcy rate to third in the nation.”
“Last week, attorney Ted Stuckenschneider got a visit he says has become all too typical in recent months. A single mother, stuck with an adjustable-rate mortgage she no longer could afford, came in for help.”
“‘She makes $1,400 a month and her mortgage has doubled from $550 to $1,100 over the last five years,’ Stuckenschneider said. ‘There is no way she can afford that. She’s three months behind and they are going to foreclose on her home.’”
“Once Stuckenschneider told her even bankruptcy could not save her home, the woman, who also faced a monthly car note that pushed her debt payments beyond her ability to pay, left his office in tears.”
“‘This is a woman who never should have been given a mortgage loan in the first place,’ Stuckenschneider said. ‘She lived with her mother and would have been better off staying there. But she wanted to realize the American dream of having a home.’”
“‘It is ridiculous for people to be able to get a home loan with 50 percent debt ratio,’ he said. ‘The government had good intentions for people to be able to become home owners, but the criteria allowed more people to buy who shouldn’t be. It should be harder to qualify.’”
The Charlotte Observer from North Carolina. “Charlotte’s teachers, police officers and firefighters can now buy foreclosed houses at a discount under a federal program intended to improve neighborhoods hit by vacancies and flagging property values. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is posting pictures on its Web site of houses it will sell for half the listed price.”
“Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools teachers received an e-mail advertising eight houses listed between $33,000 and $187,000 that they could buy for $16,500 to $93,500. The effort, already in place in cities such as Denver, Chicago and Houston, is a response to Mecklenburg County’s growing foreclose rate, the highest in the state.”
“Federal officials contacted Charlotte leaders in May about joining the Good Neighbor Next Door program after the number of foreclosures in the county jumped to 7,162 last year from 4,414 in 2002, a 62 percent increase.”
“The program comes with rules: Buyers must live in the houses for at least three years. Some of the houses also will cost thousands of dollars to repair. One house recently listed for $120,000 needed a new gas furnace, an air-conditioning unit, a sink and light fixtures. That would cost at least another $10,000, city officials said.”
“Also, discounts are common on foreclosures. Such properties often sell for 60 percent of their listed price, said Mike Jaffa, president of Graham Investment, which lends money to developers.”
“Additionally, Jaffa said, the homes frequently are in crime-ridden neighborhoods.”
“Charlotte officials blame the trend on high numbers of risky subprime loans to homebuyers with spotty credit, on predatory lending and on liberalized finance laws.”
It would seem the wisdom of building an economy around buying and selling each other houses might be lacking at this point:
‘The commercial real estate market largely has shrugged off the housing market’s woes, but that happy trend might not last forever. With builders and mortgage companies downsizing and in some cases going broke, there’s suddenly a lot of empty office and industrial space coming on the market.’
‘It’s not just the builders that are adding space to the market. HomeBanc Mortgage Corp. went broke this year, and First NLC Financial Services announced layoffs soon after moving from Deerfield Beach to Boca Raton - and before it found a taker for its Deerfield offices. With the dollar marked down to fire-sale prices, foreign investors should be swooping in to buy Palm Beach County’s commercial properties on the cheap, right?’
‘Not exactly. Foreign investors have been selling more than they’ve been buying, even as the greenback has plummeted in value.’
‘The developer of the proposed Minneola Ridge community has cleared the first hurdle to add more than 700 new units to the city’s already extensive forecast of future homes. City Council members recently voted 3-2 to annex the property north of Florida’s Turnpike where Harb Brothers Inc. aims to build the new development. The deal will require the developer to pay up to $190,000 for a new firetruck and also provide land to Minneola for public facilities.’
‘The brush truck is equipment we need,’ Mayor David Yeager said. ‘All the annexations [the city has approved] will not be built tomorrow — there will be lots of open land for there some time.’
‘I’m closing in on 17 years in Florida, but never before have I heard so much talk from so many in the state about leaving. As in ‘I’m fed up with insurance and housing costs, property taxes, schools, so-so jobs and a Legislature apparently unable to fix anything.’ The grass must be greener and well-watered elsewhere. If you haven’t caught the muttering, you’re just not listening.’
‘It’s not just wages. A part-time resident from Island Estates condos on Clearwater Beach called me this month to say: Goodbye, Florida. His taxes had soared to $12,500 from $3,000. At that price, his Gulf view lost its allure. His farewell message: ‘When you run out of people who have retired and passed away, how are you going to replace them?’
Housing Bubble Contestants:
You played the game just like we’d hoped you would, but now we have to foreclose on you, which means you have to go.
Our parting gift to you:
2 nights @ our theme motel, (transportation not included) in Beautiful Prague…
http://www.a-praha.com/data/prague/hotel-1226-tulip_house.jpg
(It would seem the wisdom of building an economy around buying and selling each other houses might be lacking at this point)
We’ll provide each other with health care instead.
Is it me, or does it seem that the problem is we consume too much housing, too much health care, too much stuff, too much food. Marginal utility is definatley well below marginal cost.
Ummm, excuse me, but isn’t health care largely a DIY affair. As in, you take care of yourself? And, if you get sick, then you seek treatment from our massive illness-care system?
RE: too much food.
Take a look at what you see at any event involving large numbers of people.
Americans are a disgrace.
The majority are drastically overweight and slovenly dressed.
Face it, we’ve become a 3rd world nation.
And there is nobody to blame but ourselves.
Right on.
San Diego 2005: “The City Where People Buy Houses to Make Money”
Flash forward to San Diego 2007: “The City Where Most Households Don’t Earn Enough to Afford a House”
I was thinking: “The City Where Most Households Don’t Earn Enough to Keep Their Houses.”
“A part-time resident from Island Estates condos on Clearwater Beach called me this month to say: Goodbye, Florida. His taxes had soared to $12,500 from $3,000.”
Yea, but think of all the “equity”. Wasn’t he happy that he got all that “FREE MONEY” by investing wisely in Florida Condos. So, he’s complaining about taxes and insurance? They should have all been contrarians, like me, the past few years and maybe this mania could have been halted.
Many people have noted here that the entire economy of FL was based on people selling houses to *each other*! Eventually, if real people aren’t buying these things to live in, things will come crashing down. When I used to tell people tinis in 2005, they’d laugh at me.
I love this crazy logic
“‘The real estate market is making it extremely difficult for residents who want to go into assisted living or go up to be by their children,’ said Bob Schulbaum, longtime president of the Alliance of Delray Residential Associations. ‘They’re tapping their savings to bring in aides.’”
So R/E prices are down as much as 50%! Youd think that would be a great help for people looking for a small apartment nearby to move their elderly parents to! But no! It means there’s no more “magic ATM” to tap!
In a pathetic attempt to elicit sympathy, the MSM now prints “there’s no $$$ to help the elderly’ instead of the more accurate: “There’s no $$$ for Hummers, boob jobs, and granite countertops”
Right, the first lady in the story has her place paid off, is using a walker, but refuses to cut her price and will wait. For what?
Maybe she wants a boob job.
I’ve dealt with Florida retirees looking to sell off some of their stuff. It’s either one extreme or the other, either they ask for a pittance (in which case I always pay them more than asked for, I just can’t help it) or they want some ridiculous price for their collectibles. I made a house call once to see a lady’s (really avergage)Royal Doulton collection and she kept hovering over me saying “I’mnotgonnagiveitawayI’mnotgonnagiveitwayI’mnotgonna
giveitaway”. I politely smiled and got the snot out of the house as soon as I could.
I’ve had first-hand experience where someone thought her “collectable” collection was priceless, and–even with overpriced eBay prices as a reference–it was only worth, maybe, 1/20th what she had paid for it.
My grandmother was that way. She would have garage sales and remembered what she paid for furniture and clothing in the 70’s. She would wonder (sometimes very angrily) why it wasn’t fetching more and hang on to it. On the other hand, she would routinely give away tools with significant value because she didn’t know how much they were still worth. I keep wondering if the inability to keep up with current valuations of “stuff” is a generational thing or a disease that will infect me when I hit 60.
“I keep wondering if [it] is a generational thing or a disease that will infect me when I hit 60.”
I think it’s the disease. Before the bubble, I offered to buy my mother’s free-and-clear house here in Orlando at a price estimated by her choice of real estate agent and she could live in it with us if she would pay market rent, to be determined the same way. She was agreeable to the sale price, but only if she would pay no rent at all. Go figure.
It’s a generational thing, affected roughtly ages 1-12 and 60 and up. It’s self-centeredness. Why do you think people start getting more liberal again after retirement? Gimme, gimme, gimme. Proves their religion is garbage.
Don’t cha know it Ben!
“Alice’s scenario is played out across the swath of retirement communities, especially in western Delray Beach, where people bought condos decades ago. Now many of them are trapped, unable to move because they can’t sell unless they significantly drop their price.”
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (as Neil would say)! Decades ago for nearly nothing in todays dollars!
What happened to the older one gets, the wiser one becomes?
My 90 yr old grams does not think this way! GREED.
grrr…
Leigh
Just more of that Pent Up Supply just waiting to surge onto the market.
Realtors keep talking about pent up demand, but I’d bet we have an order of magnitude more pent up supply than pent up demand. Most people thinking of and capable of buying a house have already done so. But a significant fraction of sellers have pulled out of the market thinking that they’ll relist “when things pick up again”. At some point these not-so-clever folks will figure out that the value of their home is dropping, and run for the exits. I’m guessing that we will actually see a major growth in inventory when this happens, perhaps 2008?
I reaad this bit of the story about Alice a little differently than most of you. I don’t get a sense of greed about her, but rather that she can’t be bothered to put hte house on the market because she was told, presumably by an ‘agent’ that it would take forever to sell. She laughs about this, indicating a sense of humor and a touch of reality about the market. She doesn’t have to sell and isn’t, but I don’t think this is greed driven. Sure, all things will sell at some price but ….
I like the part about tapping into savings to pay a home health aide. Way to go… trade real money (savings) to save a bit of “paper gains” (home equity). I’d bet home health aides are particularly expensive in FL. Another job for unemployed realtors!
and FL has one of the highest % of guaranteed incomes in the US . makes you wonder
“Sarnoff says mixing people of different incomes is a laudable goal, something Miami should do more of. ‘Instead of warehousing the working-class poor, let’s put them amongst the middle class,’ Sarnoff said. ‘Not overload the building, but five or 10 here and there.’”
The socialists never give up,
this has been tried time and time again and always fails.
This was predicted by people here back in 2005. And what does this genius think will happen to those condo prices once the city starts bringing in subsidized owners?
Some of the subsidized poor will do well being placed in a new environment. But… I cannot help but notice which kids at my high school were more likely to create problems.
Miami is doomed… West palm beach too. Heck, the house of the mouse had better be looking over its shoulder. Florida will have to go back to being a low cost state to do manufacturing in before the job trend reverses. You don’t want to hear my guess on what home prices have to drop to for that to happen.
Got popcorn?
Neil
the house of the mouse had better be looking over its shoulder
Indeed. What Disney charges has become unbelievable in some cases. For instance, prior to Thanksgiving I was surfing a Disney fan site, and found out that the Thanksgiving Buffet at the Disneyland hotel in California costs $67 per person. Pluis they charge a mandatory 15% gratuity (remember, this is a buffet). After sales tax is included this comes out to a whopping $80 per person! Even more amazing is that in years past if you didn’t have a reservation you couldn’t get in. Then there are people who state that if the can’t stay at the Grand Californian (about $400 a night) then they just won’t go. Since the SoCal home ATM spigot is getting shut off it will be interesting to see if these splurges will continue into the future.
I imagine that Disneyworld will fare no better, as they have 10’s of thousands of overpriced rooms on their property, and plenty of overpriced restaurants to go with them.
Sounds like “Irrational Extravagance”
You are forgetting that Europeans/Brits stay at half price…This may take up the slack for our economy slowing down.
“Indeed. What Disney charges has become unbelievable in some cases. For instance, prior to Thanksgiving I was surfing a Disney fan site, and found out that the Thanksgiving Buffet at the Disneyland hotel in California costs $67 per person. Pluis they charge a mandatory 15% gratuity (remember, this is a buffet).”
Wow…. Shit. In PHL for that you can get a brunch in Rittenhouse, which includes not just usual brunch stuff but raw bar and caviar! Oh wait… It is still only $56 per person!
…and this is one of the reasons Celebration failed! (1800+ homes for sale according to Realtor.com when I checked earlier this week). When parents realized that the Celebration public school was just like any other public school in poor, crime-ridden Oseola county, they all moved away.
So as the Celebration resident on this board (renter, of course), I want to make sure we get the right statistic in. If you put Celebration, FL into Realtor.com it comes up with all kinds of houses which are not actually in Celebration (look at the lower end of price scale in the houses that comes up, and you’ll see what I mean). 1800+ is not the right number. I’m not even sure there are 1800 units here, even counting the newly built condos.
It’s probably more like 300+ which those newly built condos, which is still insane for a population of around 3500, but it’s not 1800.
The other thing is that the school did used to be different, because they had all kinds of corporate sponsorship, but they lost that a few years ago. Still one of the better schools (K-8) in the area, and I still know plenty of parents who are happy to send the kids there (although personally, we homeschool).
Being from the subsidized poor class myself - and having no doubt, made more than my share of trouble through all levels of education up to ph.d. in engineering - i’m not so sure i want to live with a bunch of middle class idiots who were stupid enough to pay $175+ per square foot for their condo’s.
Speaking as a taxpayer - i certainly don’t want to subsidize their mistakes for them either.
We are all ‘those people’.
Warlock…. I bet you wanted to be poor too. You no good poor person……. /sarcasm off
Well you’re asking someone from Miami to think two steps ahead, or with some sort of logic. That sort of thing is strictly forbidden once you cross the Dade county line. I wonder who’s going to pay the $800 monthly condo maintenance for these people? They’re sure as he** not going to pay it. I guess the rest of the condo owners will have to pay more. Like you say, that’s going to be a great selling point!
5 or 10 here and there??? LOL!!! Can’t sully the ‘hood too much now, can we??
I have a better idea for Sarnoff. Let’s pack his neighborhood solidly with a bunch of the “working poor”.
why not in his back yard
“kill a commie for mommy”
50’s bumper sticker, now they’re getting elected
I had a friend who used to live in a rental in Fremont CA. It was a fine place to rent. (This was back in 1989-1990). Then they build a low-income apartment complex across the street.
The first time he heard gunshots, he said “it’s a fluke! This could happen in any neighborhood”.
The second time, when police were marking where the bullets landed in chalk right in front of his apartment, he moved out.
And my former-liberal friend now thinks that “warehouses” for indigent people are just fine. I agree.
The traditional tongue-in-cheek definition of a neo-conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.
Tom Wolfe writes that a liberal is a conservative who’s been arrested.
(From his book “Bonfire of the Vanities”.)
Thanks for that, you made my day!!!
A new book to read!!!!!!!!
I’m some ways I’m a “liberal” (though I doubt I’ll vote Democratic in this next election) in that I’m in favor of Universal Health Care. Except I don’t like any of the current proposals for it.
How I’d like to see it done is like this:
1. Figure out what dollar amount deductible would result in, say, 95% of all people not having to file a claim in any given year. (My guess is it’ll be about $1000/year deductable)
2. Make it mandatory for *everyone* to purchase this high-deductable insurance. (Medicare can simply be one provider).
3. Taxpayers pay the insurance premium for the poor (we do anyway!)
4. For people who can’t afford the first $1000 of expenses, we’ll just have to pay for it, as we do anyway now.
Currently, in many states it’s difficult to buy high-deductible insurance. Some states have rules like “All Insurance Companies MUST pay for yearly mammograms”, etc, which complicates things. In fact, if there was competition for these things, then we’d find $29 mammogram stations at every Wal*Mart.
Believe it or not, George W. Bush proposed something very similar a while back. Unfortunately he complicated it with crap, like yet-another-IRA-type-account to save for the deductible, etc.
The reason I like Universal Health Care (or, rather, mandatory high-deductible insurance) is that I think it would make Americans more productive! People would be more likely to leave their jobs and start new businesses if they weren’t enslaved by their health benefits.
It just isn’t Fair for someone who’s born with, say, a conginetial heart defect, to be uninsurable his entire life. We don’t want to enslave an otherwise productive person to “Medicare” or “SSDI” his entire life because he can’t afford to go out on his own. We should share the risk of being a Human Being over all Americans, in some reasonable way.
Great book, haven’t read it in ages but it’s certainly topical.
“If you’re not liberal when you’re young, you have no heart. If you’re not conservative when you’re old, you have no brain.”
- attributed to W. Churchill
LOL - I was much more liberal when I was younger. I have commented in the past to sister in wonder about the presence of so many old extremely liberal folks. Hasn’t the high from Woodstock worn off yet??
Probably has to do with one of 3 things:
(1) All that stuff in the Bible about charity and compassion towards the poor and/or
(2) growing up in a family that believed that if one had advantages (moral, social, economic) then there was a moral obligation and duty to society to aid the less fortunate - noblesse oblige, and/or
(3) having a broader experience with the wide swath of humanity at all levels and developing a sense of tolerance and empathy. (Tough to do if you never get out of your gated community and isolate yourself in your Beemer on your way to Neiman Marcus.)
and (4) a great sense of self-satisfaction and superiority.
Vermonter:
Probably has to do with one of 3 things:
(1) All that stuff in the Bible about charity and compassion towards the poor and/or
(2) growing up in a family that believed that if one had advantages (moral, social, economic) then there was a moral obligation and duty to society to aid the less fortunate - noblesse oblige, and/or
(3) having a broader experience with the wide swath of humanity at all levels and developing a sense of tolerance and empathy. (Tough to do if you never get out of your gated community and isolate yourself in your Beemer on your way to Neiman Marcus.)
All the things I was taught in Sunday School. Gee, how about that? Way to go, AnnScott.
This thread is *sooo* dead but: conservatism (to me) does not equal lack of charity or sympathy for humanity. I usually feel an extra responsibility because I have so much.
However, what I don’t get is how people can get old and not understand that endless charity (as in generations of welfare recipients) is *not good for people*. People will routinely choose to not work and take advantage of endless charities. It drags down both the reciepent and the giver.
Social security nets to protect the temporarily down on their luck or the disabled are another entirely and I’m not against those. The difficulty is in kicking the bums out.
And by the way, many of these attitudes were developed from growing up a family that ran a community care home - it’s a boarding home for the mentally ill and retarded. I learned a whole lot about how “the other half” lives, including employees who lived right at the poverty level because my father could not afford to pay them more.
And I am not rich - my husband and I started out with a negative net worth about 10 years ago. We live in a modest apartment with 2 paid off cars hovering at 100,000 miles each. So please, if you have a Lexus you can send me, I’m all for it.
Is $175 per sq ft in fact a good price?
Where I live these condo’s would be considered a spectacular bargain unless they had significant structural problems, and I would urge the local Housing Authority to pick them up left and right. More to the point, they wouldn’t GET to the HA in the first place; there would be private investors lined round the block.
However, the very fact that they are NOT being snapped up in Miami makes me think they are not such a great deal, and that the government should wait until they are being priced a lot lower.
Miami city government didn’t want to subsidize housing for their precious policemen, teachers, etc. when the price was $80/sq ft 8 years ago, or when the price was $300/sq ft 18 months ago, but now they think they’ve found the magical price at $175/sq ft. Besides the wretch-worthy social engineering, why do these guys think they can time the market? This is sickening and ridiculous all at once.
They did that in Baltimore, Maryland. Now my old apartment complex is so dangerous that the cable installers won’t go in there. Move To Opportunity it was called. It worked great, for the drug dealers.
I am having trouble understanding how subsidizing housing for firefighters, policemen and teachers would increase crime in the neighborhood.
Firefighters - notorious for committing arson. Policemen - violent, prone to assault and murder. Teachers - hey, where did you say my 12-year-old was spending the night?
“Sarnoff says mixing people of different incomes is a laudable goal, something Miami should do more of. ‘Instead of warehousing the working-class poor, let’s put them amongst the middle class,’ Sarnoff said.”
Since when have firefighters and teachers been considered “working class poor”? Surely, even in Florida, they are middle class?
They’re middle class until they’ve been there 20 years and then their total compensation package places them in the upper-middle class.
Go to any small city in the U.S. without a large private employer. Other than doctors and lawyers, and the self-employed business owners, the highest paid workers are the local government bureaucrats - police chief, fire chief, school board administrators, high school principal, tax assessor, city planner, etc. Why can’t people wake up to this?
When housing prices doubled, almost overnight, we all became working poor. Most just haven’t figured that out, but will when the inflation of all this mess hits food and fuel prices very soon.
By the way, why are FF, Police and Teachers more important than butchers, bakers and candle-stickmakers?? Why should their incomes be subsidized more than others? I hate this stuff.
Teachers and police officers are “the working-class poor?”
“For the past 13 years, Michelle and Raymond Beardon have enjoyed living in their Loganville home, but when they got back from vacation this past July, they were in for a big surprise.”
This is almost amazing. They went on vacation and yet they were way behind on their mortgage. If I was behind on my mortgage, I sure would not be spending money on a vacation. WOW!
I posted this before; once I was at a beach resort and I struck up a conversation with a guy about my age. We got to talking about the dotcom fiasco and I mentioned that I had heard of people buying internet stocks with 19% credit cards. He sheepishly admitted that he had done so and lost every penny of what he had borrrowed. Imagine my astonishment when he then went on to say he was still carrying about a $20k balance, and there he was on a very expensive week-long vacation!
Interesting Ben…..I was just speaking to my twenty something son over the weekend about credit card debt with his age group….He told me that “everyone” of his friends have credit card balances in excess of $5,000….I was shocked…
I was talking to a casino pitboss about kids and gambling, and he told me it was amazing how often kids in their 20’s were coming into his establishment, with $5k or $10k to invest with lady luck…
He said just 10 years ago, this was unthinkable.
Uneffing unbelievable!!
My twenty-two year old son knows I would break his legs if he even thought about gaming!
Momma don’t play!
Leigh
er…effing
Gotta learn how to curse, Moms …. you were almost there the first time.
“un-effing-believable” is the way to go. big smile!
As crazy as that may sound the same thing happened to my husband and I..we had a one man bank that we were making mortgage payments to..we changed our method of payment to wire transfer when my husband got it as a free service for opening a business account up at another bank..STRANGLY enough..with our house having over $400K in equity..the one man bank started a foreclosure proceeding on us CLAIMING we did not pay the mortgage. Oddly we saw the mortgage broker standing outside our home one day examining it. I think he was in on the scheme to try to get the house..
They sent the notice(in Fl u have to notify in writing the borrower) to my HUSBAND’s job. Never in the 5 years we had the note did they ever before send ANYTHING to his office.
Anyway we hired a attorney, a friend of ours, who wrote a letter saying we had the proof, which we did, and that we would start a major lawsuit and contact the newspapers..sure enough it was dismissed with the bank president calling and apologizing..and the lady who originally sent out the notice was SO PISSED…from that day on I sent her a copy of the mortgage payment after it was made with a note saying, “Hello boys..I’M BACK!!”
The day we closed out of the note she told the title agent, “She hated us!” CRAZY…Yeah she hated that check we got!
Ann, I once posted that the way things have gone in the mortgage market, anyone could just decide to foreclose on someone’s house at will, with phony claims like non-payment. And here you are with a real-life example. Makes me sick.
I read the story and have a different take on this. They WERE paying their mortgage, but the money wasn’t being credited to their account. The article never really comes to a conclusion about what happened, but it didn’t look like failure to pay to me, but rather a failure on the mortgage servicer’s part to properly credit funds, resulting in a pretty unexpected foreclosure. The article goes on to say that Georgia’s foreclosure process is the fastest in the country. Maybe these people got screwed while on a holiday. I do agree that this part of the article doesn’t tie in with the rest of the story
Maybe the mortgage payment made it into a little “side account” with the mortgage servicer down in the Cayman Islands.
There’s been so much fraud going on in the business, nothing would surprise me.
Thanks, George Bush, for the “ownership society”.
It almost rivals the “Great Society” of Johnson.
Steve, I was confused on this point too. It sounded like it could have gone either way: miscredited payments or they could have been behind on payments. If they were behind, then foreclosure shouldn’t have been a suprise.
Collapsing Colony Syndrome
“Bob sees other problems. Condos sit empty after a relative dies when the heirs can’t sell it. The lack of turnover is being felt. ‘The older communities, especially, need new blood,’ he said. ‘Where are the worker bees going to come from?’”
Maybe too much turkey has fried my brain. What exactly is an older community worker bee? Someone that can drive more than a mile without hitting something? Or do these communities put new residents into some sort of initiation year, changing depends undergarments for the others?
I think they’re talking about the nurses aides that actually do that. My dad had round the clock aides taking care of him in his home the last 12 years or so of his life.
In my experience (parents’ retirement community), the newly-retired often do lots of volunteer work. My mother ran the library, was on the residents’ council, taught residents to make crafts that were sold at the gift shop to raise money.
“And Commissioner Marc Sarnoff says the best thing for government to do is just what any savvy shopper would: buy, buy, buy.”
“The commissioner says if prices dip as low as $175 per square foot, government should purchase condo units and partially subsidize them for teachers, police officers and the like.”
Now there’s a real productive use of tax dollars. Why bother paying for schools or healthcare when you can buy condo’s instead. Everyone knows real estate always goes up!
SubKommander Dred
Well the stupidist part is, that lower prices eliminate the reason for subsidizing housing costs.
Finally somebody said this. Thank you.
Some stupid is so loud it’s hard to ignore.
Marc Sarnoff, let me remember that name. A social engineer and idiot to boot. Where was he in 1999, when prices were $80/sq ft? But now that prices touched $300/sq ft in a blow-off, $175 is the magic number. Brilliant, just brilliant.
“A government-assisted buyer program could fill up struggling condo buildings”
Here we go, another HBB prediction comes to pass…condos going section 8. When politiicians say “working-class poor”–they mean welfate cases and illegals. Sure, those overextended folks who bought condos at the top of the market are going to be thrilled to see the ‘hood move in down the hall. This will encourage them to throw their keys on the granite countertops and abandon the building to a slum.
As for collecting property taxes—the “working class poor” don’t pay any
That should help Miami.
I know a lady who works with people in inner city areas here in FLA. She said that maybe 20% are truly poor, the rest spend their money on fancy duds, nails, hairdos, accoutrements for their cars, etc. She’ll walk into an apartment or house where the paint is peeling and the toilet is backed up, but outside a car with $4000 rims is parked at the curb.
Palmetto that is oh..so..true!…People coming out of dump apartments..going into their BMW…
You may think that I am very picky, or unreasonable, but: a few years ago I drove many backroads in NY Adirondacks and there were so many little houses which looked unkempt and shabby, windows not washed since years, and brand new SUV’s infront.
RE: $4000 rims
Falling fast.
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash9pb.htm
Like tattoos and facial piercings, the super-expensive rims are a convenient way for people to identify themselves to the rest of society as having sub-90 IQs. And they don’t even know they’re doing it.
“And they don’t even know they’re doing it.”
That’s because they have sub-90 IQs.
As someone with a professional degree and a tattoo, I respectfully disagree.
So you mean they DO know they are doing it, then.
To each his or her own, and tattoos aren’t me, but…
Employers will be able to pick and choose employees soon, and if you have dragons crawling all over your forearms, or other visuals, you may have disqualified yourself for many a job.
What if they are just useless, stupid and black?
Can you pick and choose then, or do you have to hire them anyway?
But you miss the fact that the property owners will now be able to unload their still inflated property at above market value to the government. After their buddies unload, they can stop the program from purchasing additional property.
“The commissioner says if prices dip as low as $175 per square foot, government should purchase condo units and partially subsidize them for teachers, police officers and the like.”
And they will pay for the buy out of developers with increased real estate taxes killing the market even more. LOL, so stupid.
Exactly. When instead of bankrupting all levels of government, they could let the condos fall to $80 per square foot and let the teachers, police officers, and the like buy their own!
Got popcorn?
Neil
That’s who bought in NYC in the early 1990s. They haven’t been able to afford a home since.
Two times in the post above this scheme of providing civil servants with affordable housing is mentioned. This is bogus. It is a way to shoehorn Section 8 under an alturistic guise.
Who is to say all these firefighters, policemen, and teachers will want to live in those units? How do they feel about a civil servant’s dormitory?
This is just another take on the community “heroes” gimmick that even some HBs were using this past fall. On the surface it sounds logical and feel good, but none of these pols have bothered to realize that in many communities the civil servants make some of the best and most stable wages and except for the newbies and rookies - probably aren’t looking at that type of housing.
Just another example of invented pent-up demand.
many communities the civil servants make some of the best and most stable wages ??
Just watched a football game this weekend with a recent retired firefighter buddy of mine…Retirement check = $171k per year..I would say that qualifies as “Stable”…
Yes, whenever the MSM/pols toot the “hero” horn they invaribly quote starting salaries - and ignore the intangibles. No, I am not saying firefighters don’t derserve good compensation (red herring)- the point is to be mindful of the spin. After all, the money for those salaries and benefits has to come from somewhere. Any guesses where?
171k/yr???? I live in NY, with some of the highest paid civil servants, that is too much to believe. He would have to have been the commissioner of the NYFD with thirty-five years of service for that kind of pension.
The guy is pulling your leg. No way will any public pension hit that amount - no unless he is an ex-US Congressman.
WRONG AnnScott !!! The pension is accurate…He was a Captain…..Oh…Did I fail to mention that if he passes away that his pension goes to his spouse for the remainder of her life….
The firechief in Greer, SC is retired and working as firechief on his second five year contract.
And that doesn’t include full health benefits for him and his family, guaranteed college tuition for the kids, free admission to ski slopes, golf courses and country clubs for life, and the proceeds from his “real” job in between those exhausting 48 hour on (with bed and food, gym and softporn DVD’s,) then 72 hour off weeks for –20 years.
In California, it’s upwards of 200K/year for pullling old ladies off toilet seats when they get stuck, interspersed with bouts of handball and pingpong and doing each other’s girlfriends behind their wives backs. Hell of a life. The actual fire-fighting is done by illegal aliens.
Heroes. Real heroes….
Your tax dollars in action.
tuition for his kids,
“‘This is a real-estate driven economy,’ he said. Allow a collapse to happen and ‘people won’t be making a living. There are title companies. There are real estate agents.’”
Real estate geeks won’t be making a living? I’m so deeply saddened that I got out my violin and playing just for them.
Seriously, is this guy for real?
SubKommander Dred
The problem with this in a world where all “real” jobs are offshored is that by removing these individuals from the economic pie, we end up with less customers for all industries. As a software engineer a sizeable portion of my income for the past 5 years has derived directly or indirectly from the real estate industry, so we may all find ourselves competing for less and less…
“‘Realtors and mortgage brokers were thinking about commissions. Appraisers, title agents and lawyers were thinking about fees,’ said Erroll Phillips, a Manatee County Realtor and real estate instructor. ‘The victim is not just the banks. It is all of us.’”
Excuse me, you’re of victim? The banks are victims? Boy, is that word tossed around, like it doesn’t mean anything these days.
It is long past time for the US to make friends with Fidel. The Cubans have decent health care, at affordable prices, and a labor market that could provide home health-care aides at decent prices. The priced-out elderly in Florida could move to the Cuban shoreline, and enjoy decent health care and warm weather, without exhausting their savings. The Cuban economy could use the injection of even devalued dollars. And Cuba is a lot safer for the elderly than Florida. Since we are partners with the commies in China, boycotting the Cubans is something we can’t afford, and cannot even justify.
spike, there was a debate on C-Span about this issue over the weekend, featuring McGovern (D-Mass) and Diaz-Balart (R-Miami). Diaz-Balart, of course, was against it, because he’s made his coffee and cakes all these years pandering to the pipe-dreams of the Cuban expat community in Miami. He kept whining about the rule of law and I just had to laugh. Mr. Amnesty can stick his rule of law in his patootie, the big phony. McGovern kept bringing up the fact that we do business with China, so why not open relations with Cuba? The best that Diaz-Balart could come up with was that China doesn’t sponsor state terrorism. Neither does Cuba, in reality. Diaz-Balart knows that sooner or later relations with Cuba will be normalized, he’s just trying to hold it off long enough so that his cartel of salivating businessmen can be the first to get in on the action.
I agree. I think that its time to bury the hatchet with Cuba.
If we don’t, Cuba will become a supplicant state of Venezuela.
Diaz-Balart loves the idea of amnesty, so why not give Cuba amnesty? Our attitude is a cold war relic.
It’s amazing how thousands of people will risk their lives each year in boats, with hundreds dying, trying to get away from such utopia.
i can’t understand it either.. Every Cuban is rationed a whopping 20 oz. of beans every month and 12 eggs in the months of Sept. - Dec. And 6 lb of rice a month? Who can eat that much rice?
So what if there’s the occasional brownouts and blackouts despite them shutting off electricity at 8pm..
seems like heaven on earth..
Well, do you think that maybe the US position on relations and trade with Cuba might, just maybe, be part of the reason there is rationing? A bit off topic, but something along these same lines just occurred to me re Iran. I’m not saying Iran is a nice place, but does anyone think anymore about what the US has done in Iran? In the 50’s the CIA deposed an elected leader and installed the Shah, who turned out not to be a very nice man. Things pretty much went down hill from there. Did the ARAMCO oil company have anything to do with this? We’ve been f**king around with them for a long time; if someone did this stuff to me, I’d be a bit mistrustful and a bit angry too. |The US doesn’t have the greatest record of supporting democracies, look at the banana republics we created (for business reasons) in central America. We are not the honorable country people like to think we are.
Every freakin country in the world does business with Cuba.. except the USA.
The USA isn’t Cuba’s problem.. Castro is.
Actually Castro is the Us’s problem. We backed him against Batisto in the 1950’s.
And he will be kicking the bucket soon. Now is the time resume relations with Cuba. Unless of course, as Palmetto mentioned, we want to drive them straight into Chavez’s camp.
Raul will take over.. the commies are not about to let go of their little island paradise where, if Cubans don’t toe the line, they cut off your rations… and maybe other things as well.
As far as Chavez is concerned, Cuba/Venzuela are already butt-buddies. If anything, Chavez sees Fidel as his boyhood hero. There’s nothing to gain or lose if Cuba “falls” into their hands. It has already happened.
wolfgirl, alliances change with time..
We backed Batista until he became a full fledged gangster, murdering opponents and suspending the Constitution.. then we backed Castro until he took power and did the same while he killed off his opposition.
And we backed the mujahideen in Afghanistan against the USSR.. we backed Russia against the germans.. the list goes on and on.
Actually, if anything, we backed Batista against Socarros. I would be curious to see any evidence that Castro was ever remotely “our man”
http://www.historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=684
uba & Batista, 1952-59
Few Americans knew or cared that Senator and General and ex-President Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar overthrew the government of Dr. Carlos Prío Socarrás in two hours on March 10, 1952. Time magazine, the newsweekly, even showed him on its cover on April 9, 1952 but only a small minority of people in the United States read Time. Cuba was that shark-shaped island off the Florida coast where tourists went to see the sites, gamble, drink, sun bathe, and whore. It was the source of sugar, rum, fine cigars, “Latin” music, and Ricky Ricardo, the husband and bandleader on the “I Love Lucy” television show. >snip
Cuba, the land of opportunity that’s so wonderful no one is allowed to leave. I bet that they have a really big immigration problem in Cuba - they probably have to guard their shores like a hawk for all the people trying to sneak in to the wonderful world of Fidel. Amazing, and just beyond sad, that people in the US still idolize people like Fidel and Chavez.
Wasn’t there a Simpson’s episode about Burns and Homer mistakenly think that Cuba will offer them paradise? Castro steals there money and they have to take a raft across the Gulf of Mexico. Last words are something along the lines of “Who would have thought that there was a place worse than America?”
In 1975, after seeing what happened when you had all the refugees in one place, with the Cubans in Florida…
The government made sure the Vietnamese refugees were spread all over the country, so they wouldn’t become the ad hoc power of a state.
We used to learn from our mistakes, once upon a time…
‘The OLDER communities, especially, need NEW blood,’…
Thought that was cute.
It is cute, dunno what’s wrong with East Coast Florida, over here in West Central FLA, there’s plenty of new blood in the health care field for the retirees. The pay is crappy, though. And in some cases, there have been problems with Alzheimers and dementia patients in assisted living facilities and nursing homes who get very agitated when the aides start chattering in their native language. One lady who had a parent in one of these places was telling me some really sad stories of what goes on.
The Fees States Of America
“‘Realtors and mortgage brokers were thinking about commissions. Appraisers, title agents and lawyers were thinking about fees,’ said Erroll Phillips, a Manatee County Realtor and real estate instructor. ‘The victim is not just the banks. It is all of us.’
“A Real-Estate Driven Economy”
Ben — Are you trying to bait yesterday’s trolls into returning?
Was in Fl last week…place looks like a depression and smells like a recession…places closing up/closed up and couple of restaurant owners I spoke to say business is off by 50-60%…realtors now seen at best buy asking “Can I help you?”…
Husband had a realtor client with 100K a month overhead. Owned one of the chain real estate firms..guess he can’t pay for the brand name so lost it all and opened one man shop! Funny he could pay the 100K overhead and couldn’t pay husband’s CPA bill..what goes around comes around!
Didn’t see his tacky hummer with the company name, detailed all over, parked in front of the office anymore…
I’m not sure why any small business owner would want to be seen in a Hummer. If a contractor drove up to my job site in a Hummer to provide a work estimate I’d already be on the phone calling someone else with smaller margins.
Exactly. Everybody in Florida knows that Hummers are only meant for impressing your children and their little friends. “Honey, can you take the tank out of the garage and go pick up little Junior at elementary school?”
Parents sure have changed over the years. My folks used to go out of their way to EMBARASS me in front of my pals.
At a stop sign I got into a shouting match with a fake-baked sales guy in his Hummer. He took issue with me giving him the big “L” for loser finger. I told him to go to Iraq if he wanted to play soldier so badly. He snarled at me and my poodle. (I was petsitting my sister’s standard poodle).
I don’t really understand the appeal. Now a friend of mine has a Daimler Ferret Scout Car. Now THAT has appeal. If you’re getting a four wheeled tank, get one with ARMOR.
Huge tax breaks for heavy ‘trucks’ over the last 5 years or so I think. Something like 100% depreciation expense in the first year for ‘work’ vehicles weighing over 5K lbs and I don’t think that there were many vehicles in this class besides the Hummer/Expedition etc. I don’t agree w/ buying one either but wanted to shed some light on why we see so many of them on the road.
Very true.
I work for an electrical contractor and whenever we buy new vehicles for the field the owner wants us to target older (3-5 years old), but low-mileage F-150s (we have a fleet of about 40 trucks)–preferably with some dents. We get some great deals from local dealers who buy them wholesale and then sell them to us without fixing them up.
The guys in the field occasionally grumble, but he’s convinced that the general contractors respect the fact that none of our trucks are brand-new.
So we save a ton of money on vehicles and perpetuate a positive image (for our customers).
‘Where are the worker bees going to come from?’”
Florida priced them out of the state! Why is that so hard for the RE bulls to understand? Florida lives and dies on the backs of doctors aides, nurses, and other jobs that pay $35k to $50k per year once the individual has a few years of experience! $500k homes might as well be on the moon for those people.
Florida used to attract low cost manufacturing to the state. It will again. Yes, I’m that bearish on Florida home prices.
Now… as to selling foreclosed homes in shaky neighborhoods cheap to cops, teachers, firefighters, and others that will actually fix the place up. Now that sounds like a great idea.
Got popcorn?
Neil
“Sarnoff says government wouldn’t be BAILING OUT developers, just taking advantage of a good deal. But if the idea helped stabilize the shaky real estate market a bit, Sarnoff said, that’s not a bad thing.”
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means” Inigo Montoya, Princess Bride
I love to tell my pro-bailout friends that the best way to stablize a market is to let prices fall or rise to where “responsible” demand and “realistic” supply meet. I define both as: “responsible” meaning the person purchasing the property can afford it at a fixed rate, even through hard times, and “realistic” as the person selling the property is doing so to move to another property, and they were living in said property or using it for a living purpose.
I have two friends who contracted for developers here in Illinois for years and had killer incomes. Both are now living with their parents (these are guys in their mid to late 30s), and broke. Of course they’re still driving the Hemi trucks (not sure where they’re driving, though). The developers need a bailout as much as I need to have more of my wealth confiscated.
For some reason The Princess Bride seems to be the HBB representative movie of choice for the mess we’re in. Let’s hope it doesn’t get supplanted by Falling Down…
“‘This is a real-estate driven economy,’ he said. Allow a collapse to happen and ‘people won’t be making a living. There are title companies. There are real estate agents.’”
“The commissioner says if prices dip as low as $175 per square foot, government should purchase condo units and partially subsidize them for teachers, police officers and the like.”
So I guess what he is saying is that renters and ppl wanting to purchase should be screwed on both sides of the game. Also these are the same kind of ppl that bitch because they can only get 400k for the house they paid 200k not too long ago, cause it could be sold to some moron for 500k at the peak (in effect, their homes are being stolen from them). And the idea of subsidizing homes at artifically high levels so that low wage workers can afford them? Obviouisly if housing falls to realistic prices, the ppl he claims to be worried about will be able to afford them without intervention, and the government doesnt need to be involved in such discrimination anyway. Who is to say one low paying job is better than another? PPL suck. As for the poor real estate agents innocently trapped in this mess. I have no comment because I dont want Ben to begin blocking my postings.
Sorry… OT… Citi getting ready to whack a butt load of folks.
http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/071126/citi_jobs.html
It estimated that the cuts could total anywhere between 17,000 and 45,000.
Ummm… the lower number is about what I expected from Citi (short term, not in toto). The upper number would wake up a few people as to the fact a recession is here.
Got popcorn?
Neil
Yep…..
But have no fear! A few hundred thousand Euro shoppers will easily compensate for millions of worried, broke, laid off and soon to be laid off Americans who will not be spending large sums this Christmas.
Paying Paul to rob Peter
“Miami’s former building boom, has become Miami’s building bargain, one city commissioner says. And Commissioner Marc Sarnoff says the best thing for government to do is just what any savvy shopper would: buy, buy, buy.”
“The commissioner says if prices dip as low as $175 per square foot, government should purchase condo units and partially subsidize them for teachers, police officers and the like.”
“The government had good intentions of making the people become home owners….” Wrong. The government had intentions sure enough but they are not good. For the home owner anyway.
Once you own a home, you are a big, fat, stable cash cow for Federal and State government. By tracking demographics such as those moving in or out of the area, their incomes, what they buy, how many children they have, etc, they can manipulate taxes. I was reading a book recently which mentioned how the FDA (the government) would not approve a sweetner for a food addative like cakes, candy, etc. The sweetner (Stevia) is made from plants so, obviously, it’s probably much safer than the chemical artificial sweetners like Splenda. Gee, could it be that our government’s good intentions (to protect us from dangerous food substances) is influenced by the giant corporations which make Splenda and Sweet and Lo. The same book mentioned how a study showed that teaching children not to eat meat was bordering on child abuse……the study was conducted by the Cattleman’s Association.
We all need to be very careful when hearing the words “government good intentions.” Welcome to Brave New World.
I found your post insulting. I lived in DC during Marion Barry’s reign (admitted current crack head and john that kept getting relected as Mayor), and have had the privilege of watching the Bush Administration in action. Government officials dedicate their lives to helping others and making the world a better place. They tackle big issues like preventing gays from marrying and taking over the world. It’s not like they are realtors or anything. Show some respect.
Our government’s good intentions long ago became little more than the exploitation of fear and the debasement of fact so as to provide maximum benefit to certain politically-favored corporate interests. That’s why I find cries of “socialism” so disappointing. People are using an obsolete playbook and we are in the process of becoming an obsolete society because of it.
Socialist!
“The sweetner (Stevia) is made from plants so, obviously, it’s probably much safer than the chemical artificial sweetners like Splenda.”
Plant products: ricin, scopolamine, coniine (water hemlock), atropine, morphine, taxol, viscotoxins. Though I’ll admit that the early evidence that stevia is mutagenic is probably flawed. Japanese consumers have been using it for 30 years without any obvious ill effects, but it is still banned by Hong Kong, Singapore and the European Union as a possible mutagen.
Japanese groceries also sell MSG by the kilo.
Well, it passed this household’s test: stevia is the only sweetener that I can eat without causing serious reactions. Splenda, etc, has always caused me problems. *sigh*
Why is it (Stevia) obviously safer? What makes plants automatically safe? Lots of plants are poisonous; deadly nightshade, fox glove, (most) mushrooms…..just because something grows doesn’t make it necessarily good. Do you understand how some of these artificial sweeteners work? Some are isomeric structures of normal sugars and are not digestible, although they may be chemically identical to normal sugars. Not pushing artificial sweeteners here, can’t stand them, but just saying …..
Preserving their Legacy…
“‘Going once, going twice, sold to Legacy State Bank,’ attorney Samuel L. Chesnutt shouted to a crowd of investors showing little interest.”
“A few were unsold homes. Most were vacant lots. All went to a buyer with no home-owning dreams. ‘We expect to see a lot more of that, to be honest,’ said Domonic Purviance, a senior consultant with Metrostudy.”
“‘This is a real-estate driven economy,’ he said. Allow a collapse to happen and ‘people won’t be making a living. There are title companies. There are real estate agents.’”
As a Buggy whip maker I’d like to ask where you were when I lost my job. After all, I AM entitled to keep doing the same job even when there is no demand for it right ?
New code word for 08′ “bailout”. Everyone wants a bailout and the so called experts are all for it the latest is for Citigroup the cry is now at hand, of course Country Wide wants their share of a gov’t hand out as does a few others.
Capitalism is great when you are a multi billion dollar company who mismanged everything and forgot the golden rule you don’t lend to people who can’t pay back but it is fine and dandy Uncle Sam must rescue you all is well.
Now if you are Joe’s hot dog stand and a lot of bad luck hits you like bad weather (no fault of your own) and you can’t sell hot dog’s go and ask the gov’t for a bailout???
Welcome Back, now get lost.
“For the past 13 years, Michelle and Raymond Beardon have enjoyed living in their Loganville home, but when they got back from vacation this past July, they were in for a big surprise.”
“‘Actually have mail, tons of mail and we open up the first piece of mail and it was actually a foreclosure notice out of the newspaper,’ said homeowner Michelle Bearden.”
“The Beardens had decided to refinance their home in 1999. They blame their lender for their current trouble, claiming their monthly mortgage payments were incorrectly credited to their account. They’re now suing the mortgage company.”
When I read this, I couldn’t help thinking of this famous exchange from Trains, Planes and Automobiles:
Receptionist Welcome to Marathon… May I help you?
Neal Yes.
Receptionist How may I help you?
Neal You can start by wiping the f**king dumb ass smile off your rosey f**king cheeks - and then you can get me a f**king automobile. A f**king Datsun, a f**king Toyota, a f**king Musting, a f**king Buick… four f**king wheels and a seat.
Receptionist I really don’t care for the way you’re speaking to me.
Neal And I really don’t care for the way your company left me in the middle of f**king nowhere with f**king keys to a f**king car that isn’t f**king there. And I really didn’t care to f**king walk down a f**king highway and across a f**king runway to get back here to have you smile at my f**king face. I want a f**king car… right… f**king… NOW!
Receptionist May I see your rental agreement?
Neal I threw it away.
Receptionist Oh boy.
Neal Oh boy what?
Receptionist You’re f**ked.
LOve the ATL stories…Where is that realtor troll who showed up a few weeks ago who was from ATL? LMAO. Sorry sucker!
me too!
From Ben’s first post on this thread.
“I’m closing in on 17 years in Florida, but never before have I heard so much talk from so many in the state about leaving…”
It ain’t just talk. U Haul rates for 26 foot truck, picking up December 10th.
West Palm to Nashville: $2,179
Nashville to West Palm: $289
Looks like an opportunity to me. Hire ex-realtors, ex-mortgage brokers, ex-appraisers and ex-Citi employees (at min. wage of course) to drive empty moving trucks to Florida. Load them all into a Greyhound, go to another city and do it all over again.
I’ll call it “U-haul arbitrage”
A friend who is a retired firefighter permitted $171k in retirement rather than basic Soc. Sec. levels?! Part of the thievery involved in public employee pension debacle, which cannot and should not be paid off . Gained only by collusion with politicos to get elected for each next spot. From Federal level on down. Public Pension emergency should be declared and all–past,present,future–be rolled back to Soc. Sec. levels.
Think that topic deserves a whole different Comment Sect.
Oh yeah…you will get a whole lot of people willing to take on low-paying and/or dangerous jobs in ublic service so that when they retire they can try to live on $600 a month - the minimum Soc.Sec. payment.
The poster above was either being facetious or was repeating something told to him as a joke by the supposed retiree.
I have been around here for awhile AnnScott…..I don’t post bullsh$t….I leave that for others…The pension is accurate and the “Supposed” retiree is a personal friend….
People are lined up to take on most any government job in Florida. That is proof enough to me that total pay (salary, benes, pensions, etc.) is too high. Come down off your academic bell tower and get a grip on what government welfare really means.
Son’s friend, straight out of high school (2003)–one semester at community college studying something called “fire science” hired on and within six months was pulling in 75K a year with overtime…for what was essentially a part-time job. After his first year on “the force” he bought himself a subsidized house with a 50K grant, faked a knee injury (retired at 90% salary with medical and family bennies,) and started studying architecture.
Went out on about five fires total, he says….
guess I will have to franchise my combo Doggie Botique/U Make It Candles idea. I will need to open a second one in West Palm Beach, beside San Luis Obispo CA. I am uniquely qualified. I have never owned a dog. I don’t know much about cooking. And I know nothing about making candles. Filling out my HELOC loan to fund my $ Million dollar idea. Too many voids left in these towns for such needed services. Probably better qualified than the bellyup folks. And, I might add, I really don’t want to work at it either.
know nothing about making candles
Still looking for a cash deal on a little concrete block shack in West Central Florida. Grrr! Prices are coming down, and people are begging for buyers in St. Pete, West Pasco (Holiday, Port Richey, New Port Richey) and inner city Tampa. Not places I want to live. When I see my cash price in areas from Brandon south to the county line, we’re there.
try
Venice- it has a moat, airport,27 holes of cheap golf and easy beach access
but I could be lying
Somebody here posted this idea previously…….why not take out an ad for a week or two advertising what you’ll pay and what you want?? Especially if you’re a cash buyer. You never know how desperate somebody might be.
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There are not a whole lot of those old cracker box cinder block houses down south from Brandon to Hillsborough County line.
Bloomington ( or Bloomingdale ? ), Fish Hawk Ranch, etc are all new developments that were built over the last 10 years. They are those “built to last” frame-n-stucco shitboxes that the illegal aliens built.
Down around Lithia Springs you may find an olde Florida cinderblock crackerbox; as you may find around Ruskin, etc as well.
I will be vulturing upon such a place after we are in the coming deep recession and prices have come back to “reality” here in East Polk County.
All I want is a nice quiet 3/2 with some shade trees and a backyard. I will pay no more that $ 120,000…..$ 80,000 for a fixer-upper.
I told this to my Realtor(tm) drinkin’ and fishin’ buddy a year ago and he laughed at me. Mentioned my desires again last week and his voice just trailed off…his face was stern. No comment from him about falling prices anymore. He’s gettin’ divorced and trying to get out of the Real Estate Scam game.
I’d say we will need to wait till 2009 before buying these types of homes.
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One last comment from me on this thread.
The condo unit on the beach on Siesta Key (Sarasota) we occasionally rented during the winter in the years we didn’t live in Florida is still available for the ENTIRE months of December, January and February. This time last year the calendar was almost filled.
We’ll be going down for a week again this winter, and I’m thinking we should offer 20% below his asking rental rate. Too low? Not low enough? It’s a nice place and I don’t want to insult the guy (I don’t know him).
I wouldn’t worry about that in the least. When you worry about “insulting” someone you automatically cede superiority to them in a negotiation.
He’s a home-moaner. Nothing more. nothing less. He wants your money ( or not ). Tell ‘em to take it or leave it. At least you are willing to take the time and offer him your hard-earned money for a short stay in his condo…( or the banks, however you see it )
He shouldn’t be “insulted” by any offer. He doesn’t have to respond to offers that aren’t worthwhile either. He should treat undesirable offers just like one treats spam and junk mail….as undesirable.
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People spent on Black Friday, big surprise. Fine, they ran up their credit cards in anticipation of the holidays. The numbers show weakness, and the bigger question is whether shoppers will have the money to make their mortgage payments after the holidays. The more illogical spending behavior now, and the more likely that the economy really goes off a cliff in the new year.