The Housing Bubble

“Honestly, this area is getting spooky.”

And it used to be so nice and quiet, sort of out of the way but with decent access to Tampa. When we moved here in 2000, we lived in that little old Fairmont Park subdivision, not the mobile home one but the little plot of 1970s concrete block houses off SW 1st Street at 17th Ave near 41. It used to be nice in there, very quiet and fairly safe. Drove through there, too, and parts of it have gone severely downhill.

In 2000, one of the locals told us that yes, there was crime, but it was mostly among the Mexicans who were involved in drugs and that they would dump a body or two in the middle of an orange grove.

nice and quiet - that’s what brought us here. The area has really gotten bad over the last year. With all the listed for sale/rent homes in here it’s much worse than it appears. There’s a bunch sitting empty with no signs - house next door was foreclosed a year ago and still no for sale sign. I’m sure this is part of the hidden inventory banks are holding - probably as collateral to the federal reserve. I don’t see how this area won’t become section 8 housing. They’ll probably convert the bigger places into apartments.

Of course, now those orange groves are gone and there are sprawling HOAs in their place, so what’s a pissed off drug dealer to do? Their happy dumping grounds have been usurped.

“I don’t see how this area won’t become section 8 housing. They’ll probably convert the bigger places into apartments.”

I’ll bet some of it has already become Section 8, you probably just don’t know it. That’s already happened in one of the subdivisions off Shell Point east of 41. What a mess. I drove down 301 from Brandon to Sun City Center the other day and saw TWO MORE DEVELOPMENTS that have gone up in the past few months. This is ON TOP OF the many developments that were already there and had gone up since were moved here in 2000. It is worse than I could have ever imagined.

Get a room fellas. lol. Have a great 4th.

What makes you think that “white flight” has more to do with race than with illegals taking over neighborhoods abandoned by whites Americans making stupid real estate bets and the illegals poor moving into newly blighted areas?

Your post reads like a page out of the “Turner Diaries”.

Diogenes,
Don’t despair, Florida doesn’t have a monopoly on this. I think every border state participates in the ‘flight’. California being one.

I have been noticing the waves of poverty lapping my local shores recently.

I live amongst attorneys, doctors, ceo’s, pilots, etc. About 5 months ago I walk into my garage, the garage door was open, and out of the corner of my eye I notice movement on my driveway. I look to see a short Peruvian looking guy parking a bicycle on my driveway. Where I live this might as well have been a F-king UFO. He walks up to me briskly, albiet in a non-threatening manner and hugs me and proceeds to tell me he ‘loves me’. I’m not afraid, more in disbelief as to what I’m seeing. He speaks very broken english but tells me he’s very hungry. Then he proceeds to show me his seriously birth defected foot. Like nothing you have probably seen before. Kind of like a tree root.

Anyway, I couldn’t help but feel some compassion for this poor b*astard. I gave him some money for food and sent him on his way.

Now before any of you think I’m a bleeding heart Liberal, I’m very conservative. I would like to send all the illegals back to their own S-hole.

The decay is real.

I can’t begin to imagine the rage building in lower class America right now.

Try and remember this when it’s time to vote people. Throw them all out, except for R. Paul.

Mike

Could you not hire this fella to do something you need done?

S..t, if I was in that predicament, I’d work my ass off to prove I wasn’t one of those typical “Section 8ers”…

I won’t employ these people. My neighbor, a ceo, and I were building our common fence. He was also building his side fence with another neighbor, a pilot. They went to Home Despot and picked up two illegals to do the demo of the old fence. My neighbor asked if would like to use them on our fence. I said I don’t even want them in my neighborhood. He did some quick back peddaling.

To me it’s like feeding a stray dog.

Mike

By “Midatlantic” do you mean the Sargasso Sea or Peachtree Avenue downtown?

We’ve had a LOT of rain here, I have to say we’ve been pretty lucky. Not as much as some parts of the Midwest, though. I heard they’re getting eaten alive by mosquitoes now.

The little desert town of Moab, Utah has a wetlands next to the river and the hatch there was the worst anyone’s ever seen in history. Lots of wet weather this spring.

I hate mosquitoes.

Bear, with your thick fur coat, you should be immune to the little buggers.

How I wish. For some reason, I’m allergic to those sinful creatures. Each bite swells up to the size of a silver dollar, and that’s if I don’t scratch it. If I do, well, it becomes the most unsightly looking “growth” you’ve ever seen. Not fun. BTW, I do have a furry bear laying next to me. He’s my 120lb Akita!

Roll him over and scratch his tummy for me.

Mozzies are evil little buggers, for sure. Almost as bad as gnats and no-see-ums. I am currently working on a huge grant from NIMH to better understand why God supposedly created them. Flies, too. You could be part of the research, if you need a job.

(I mean, need a job real BAD.)

BB, I have the same problem. If you can get some 1:10,000 epinephrine to rub over it (I knew a veterinarian who had a stash) within a few minutes, it would barely swell or itch at all.

The worst mosquitoes on the planet have to be on the Alaskan Tundra.

Believe me, if you’ve never been you have no idea.

Mike

And locking stray dogs into a condo is compassionate? Hope you were joking, even so, bad joke.

I still am bothered by the story a few months ago of the young woman who walked on her mortgage (or otherwise abandoned her residence) and left her dog caged inside, to starve to death. Which it did. Was hoping to read a followup that she paid a price for that.

She’ll pay a kharmic price - probably many years from now.

The cosmos has a way of keeping track of heinous crimes, which is gratifying to know, sometimes.

I hope this was a joke. It bears repeating that locking stray dogs in a house is a heinous crime. The cruelty and senselessness that course through the human mind–at some times and in some people–are profoundly depressing.

Should not have said stray dogs. Should have said coyotes. I hate coyotes the packs in the IE are getting bigger and braver. Had a pack take out some farm animals in my back yard. There going after kids now. Not good, hell the mountain loins are getting braver too. I cant stand coyotes.

“The cosmos has a way of keeping track of heinous crimes, which is gratifying to know, sometimes.”

Which means, whether someone receives payback for a bad deed depends purely on chance.

Kharma indeed.

Ouro’s rescue plan:
Raise rates and screw the speculators. 8 % to start.
Encourage saving in accounts like when we were young.
Rescue the dollar like it’s a prisoner of war.
Save oil for truckers, business owners and ration suv drivers.
Have the government credit people with private health insurance, also credits for renters, and animals owners.
Food stamps for illegals only if they have a SS#.
Stop advertising the good life. Let’s get back to basics.

“Stop advertising the good life. Lets get back to basics.”

Getting back to basics is well on its way, and along with it will come the genuine Good Life.

IMHO.

Why would illegals have a SS#?

Coldstone Creamery is hitting the dust. Good riddance. Overpriced, slimey sweet goo.

Hey dimedropped, have you heard anything about a developer from Charlotte, Steve Walsh. I heard on the news here and he took his life last week in your area. He was a big builder here for years and I guess moved down your way. He lived in a phat house, so the news said.

Lane

Lane - in case Dime doesn’t get back here, yes, the man blew himself away. He lived in Windsong, a snazzy, relatively new neighborhood in expensive Winter Park.

In today’s Orlando Sentinel, there is an article about his partner suspecting that “funds may have been misappropriated.”

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-walsh0408jul04,0,319797.story

It ain’t over ’till it’s over.

Lane-funny you bring that up but I am consulting with some people looking into that very situation. Seems some things may be a bit fishy. DUH!

I know his history well, Charlotte, Charleston, Orlando-always the philanthropist even when he was going broke-classic case of, altogether now, PONZI!

This is going to be a biggy. Stand by for news.

Use your gold to buy a one-way plane ticket out of the U.S.?

Use your gold to buy a one-way plane ticket out of the U.S.? Ha! You presuppose that the airline selling the ticket will still be in business when you want to leave. Better use the gold to buy your own plane & hire a flight crew, that’s what I meant by the Goldfinger emergency escape method.

Be sure to wear a uniform under your clothes, and be careful about not being sucked out of the window of the airplane.

Otherwise, enjoy the trip.

Well, we never went to the moon either. And there was a second shooter in Dallas. Men in Black is not totally fiction; aliens do indeed walk among us. Presidents are solely responsible when the US economy heads south (but never even mentioned when it heads north).

I’m told there are fifty or so families that control the world. These families periodically assemble to decide who will go to war, when they’ll go to war, and who will win.

Everything that happens is a plot, a part of a Larger Plan. All news is but controlled deception, all elections are a farce because all elections are rigged. Politicians are mere puppets of these fifty families.

Those that don’t go along are killed. Those that uncover this “truth” are killed. Any and all steps will be taken to protect these families’ power.

I find the whole idea absurb, but …

Porcine Esthetestians

Still cheaper than the multitude of costs that go with poor health and lack of production/invention/creativity/happiness that goes with that. Hard to quantify, but very real.

cool.. thanks for the re-link..

Still cheaper than the multitude of costs that go with poor health and lack of production/invention/creativity/happiness that goes with that.

i agree, but there’s a hump you’ve gotta get over before you can afford good health. Clean air is only one of the requirements and it’s certainly not the most important by a long shot.
First you’ve gotta have a good diet, or at least enough food to survive… agriculture-based society or something similar. Then, as society matures you get a job. That requires industry. Industry starts at the filthy bottom, and with success eventually works it’s way upwards.

Just look at poor countries (even semi-industrialized ones)and compare their level of environmentalism to the wealthy nations.. except at the international political level (Kyoto Treaty, et al) it’s virtually unknown and unimportant to most of the 3rd world’s population.

” it’s virtually unknown and unimportant to most of the 3rd world’s population.”

I think this is untrue. Certainly, the Chinese in the countryside, for example, know their water is filthy, and they are not unaware of the dirty air. What is true is that they know they are powerless to change anything. And they do suffer the consequences.
I am sure the wealthy and influential in any developing country are sure of their water supply and live in far less polluted areas. Many of course, choose to live abroad.
No one needs a formal education to see raw sewage or chemical filth in the local river…or to see dead fish littering the banks of formerly useful rivers.
Americans who buy food, food additives or vitamins produced in developing countries, or American food shipped to developing countries for packaging might be wise to think about what they’re consuming.

certainly they are aware of filth.. anyone would be.
What i meant was that in poorer countries, there are few if any active measures taken to curb most types of pollution.. the people cannot be aware of something that doesn’t exist.

As for not hunting endangered species for food, or to have huge plots of “wetlands” or “rain forests” cordoned off and unavailable for living in, farming or any form of economic exploit, the same holds true. The environmentalist industry and psyche just isn’t developed. Poor people cannot afford to forego those valuable resources.

After exploiting all our resources and profiting and becoming wealthy, some (environmentalists) are now trying to save jungles in Africa and S America from native exploitation for profit.. The natives are not… but they will when we pay them to do so.

Still cheaper than the multitude of costs that go with poor health and lack of production/invention/creativity/happiness that goes with that.

Oh, but the TAXPAYERS pick up the tab for poor health, and lack of invention/creativity won’t show up until NEXT year’s balance sheet, so who cares about that.

If the government truly taxed companies for cradle –> grave of their processes, the factories would be the least polluting in history.

If the government truly taxed companies for cradle –> grave of their processes, the factories would be the least polluting in history.

you’d be safer assuming that, in the end, the consumer pays for everything. All money comes from the working person.
Tax a corporation and the very last element to shrink will be profits. That’s when the corporation fails and goods, services, products and/or jobs and/or pension/ retirement funds disappear, tax revenues shrink and potholes in the streets grow…

Consumers can pay in all sorts of interesting ways.

“The environmentalist industry and psyche just isn’t developed. Poor people cannot afford to forego those valuable resources.”

I’m not sure what you mean by “an environmentalist industry”, but if you mean letting developers do what they will, for profit, without impact studies,I think you might change your mind. Everyone against impact studies likes to use the snail darter as an example, for some reason, but let’s stick with wetlands.
To satisfy developers and casino owners, large amounts of the wetlands in the mouth of the Mississippi were drained for construction. Worked fine for a while. Unfortunately, the wetlands had served both to blunt and absorb the floodwaters generated by a hurricane. Low lying NO lost any natural barrier to the flood waters of Katrina. In a Cat 5 flooding was inevitable, but the speed and depth of the incoming water was especially deadly.
Of course,there were other problems, the Army Corps of Engineers had done a slipshod job of maintaining the levees,
the pols had no serious evacuation plan in place with such a huge population without private transportation et.al.
The Feds had conducted and taxpayers had paid for a full disaster feasibility study a full year before Katrina and these problems were noted. Nothing was done however.
Which is why your statement “it’s virtually unknown to much of the 3rd world’s population” caught my eye…the folks in the 9th ward might as well have been in the 3rd world for all oversight provided by the Feds to modify problems that had already been identified at taxpayer expense.
And how many tens of billions have been misspent since…whereas enforcing wetlands preservation would have mitigated some of the effects of the floodwaters and the final costs to taxpayers. Have you heard of any of the developers being on the hook for a dime after draining those wetlands for profit?

oh please.. you know perfectly well what i’m talking about but you pull the “Katrina” card..
i have as much sympathy for Katrina victims as anyone, but build a coastal city at the delta of a wild river, 50 feet below sea level, and trouble will manage to find you no matter what.

kunstler dot com, daily grunt archives,

I thought it was interesting…would still like to hear what you and others think, joey.

James;
You may recall that a few weeks ago I wrote regarding my theory that a substantial chunk of the increase in the price of oil was due to speculation to offset bad debt portfolios by the larger east coast investment houses. What puzzled me was how this worked: because once the futures are bid up and the margins made, then the price of crude at the head assumes the previous month’s futures price! The short answer is that a kind of ratcheting mechanism is at work: once the price is bid up, it stays there until it is bid up again the following month.
It’s reported that the level of oil futures market activity by these investment houses is significant, with at least 10 percent of the futures market controlled in any one month. With each market manipulation, their margin per barrel is probably around $5.00. So if you take 10 percent of 85,000,000 barrels a day times 30 days in an average month times $5.00 you get a total of $1,275,000,000 in margin. With each month of these shenanigans, these banks can offset upwards of 12,000 subprime mortgages. Not a lot given that there may be upwards of 2,000,000 of these ticking time bombs, and considerably more if the banks fail to walk the razor’s edge they’ve defined for themselves. At this rate, it will take over ten years to offset the bad debt portfolios and only if few of those who have investment accounts make withdrawals. At the rate of +$5.00 a month, the price for a barrel of oil in 2018 would probably be over $900. It will never get there!
So each month, the investment houses pay out cash to those with account holders who demand it, offset bad paper and then go back to work the futures market with what’s left and what they borrow for 30 days from the Fed. As long as they work quickly, they can keep ahead of the game, at least until the price of oil destroys the underlying economic base. It’s reported that with Americans now paying around 11 percent of their income on energy, we are getting pretty darn close to the end of these shenanigans: in the 1973-74 time frame, the tipping point was reached when Americans had to pay more than 12 percent of their income for energy. When oil gets to $150/barrel in two to three months we’ll be past that point.
Another thing to note: a fair amount of funds in the investment accounts are withdrawn annually in the July-August time frame so that middle class parents can pay college tuition. This is one of the reasons why the market always drops in value in the late summer.
If you consider the combined effects of both the limits to oil futures manipulation and the annual July-August tuition dip and you have some of the makings of a perfect storm.
I think that we very well could be witness the effects of gravity on some very big shoes within the next two months.
It is a pity that potatoes do not have planting instructions written on them like Burpee seed packets do.
Regards,
GEORGE W. ABERT, AIA
ROSEMARY BEACH, FL

joey, I posted it but it may take awhile, as it’s long. it will eventually appear above this one.

If it doesn’t appear, go to kunstler dot com and look in the daily grunt archives, it’s a letter, close to the top.

right .. it was a reader comment.. i’ll do that

Interesting. I find the final line enigmatic but fascinating, especially in the context of the previous lines. Can someone perhaps explain?

“It is a pity that potatoes do not have planting instructions written on them like Burpee seed packets do.”

hmm.. It’s still a little murky. If someone could explain it in more detail or in another way, i might understand the money flow..

All he mentions is investment banks. Assuming the process actually works, there are a lot of other entities holding bad paper or bad mortgages which might be using that same technique. If so, the 10% cost of a barrel he estimates due to this type of speculation could be much more in total..

thanks again for the repost.

Look at a chart showing Switzerland’s illegal immigrating problem and then put it over a chart of Switzerland’s pollution and crime.

See any correlation?

” The cities are very dirty, and crime infested.”

Are you smoking something?? I visit Zurich and Geneva fairly often, and this is nuts. My only beef with cities in Switzerland is that they are so orderly and so neatly tended that they seem a little boring to me. I was in Zermatt a few summers ago,and went hiking out to some nearby farms…even the sheep look manicured.
Exactly where in Switzerland did you visit?