Changing Long-Held Perceptions
The Greenville News reports from South Carolina. “Unemployment, job security, and the inability to obtain financing for a mortgage are some of the factors that weighed down statewide home sales in May. Local real estate professionals say one of the biggest hindrances to the housing market throughout the state is unemployment. ‘We need more jobs. We need free flow of financing again, and I’m not talking about when banks were giving money to anybody that could fog a mirror. I’m talking about financially, reasonable, sound financing and streamlining the short sale foreclosure process,’ said Nick Kremydas, CEO of the South Carolina Association of Realtors.”
“Condos, he said, have had some of the biggest price drops, creating a lot of movement with cash buyers coming in to take advantage of the inventory. Much like the national figures, the local statistics are being compared to those months in 2010 when there was an ‘artificial’ increase in sales activity because of the tax credit, Kremydas said. ‘I think a real test for our numbers is going to be in July and August and how we compare to last year and the year before when there was no tax credit,’ he said.”
The Atlanta Journal Constitution in Georgia. “Metro Atlanta’s already distressed housing market now must absorb a new blow: the closing of one southside military base and deep cutbacks at another, adding thousands more homes for sale as families move. It’s clear that hundreds of families are trying to sell quickly in a market where homes languish. Those able to sell are taking heavy losses, even with the federal government’s Housing Assistance Program, or HAP, set up specifically to help military families by covering the expected financial shortfalls they incur from home sales.”
“The Army Times recently reported that, according to an internal audit by the Army Corps of Engineers, nine out of 10 military homeowners affected by base closings and realignments most likely do not qualify for HAP.”
“Reservists Nicole and Edward Hill have tried to sell their Locust Grove home since 2009. They’re not directly affected by the BRAC, but they want to sell because they know they won’t be in the Atlanta area more than another year or so. They recently took the home off the market after learning HAP had run out of money for the remainder of its fiscal year, which ends in September. They plan to try again in the fall.”
“‘It’s frustrating,’ said Nicole Hill. The subdivision where they live with their three children had homes whose values ranged from $200,000 to more than $1 million about five years ago. ‘Houses on the golf course were selling for half a million when we bought our house in 2005. Now, many are in foreclosure and selling in the $200,000 range,’ Hill said. ‘It’s disappointing that the market has gotten so low and there’s no outlet for it to rebound anytime soon. We’re just sitting on toxic property.’”
The Birmingham News in Alabama. “Owning a home has long been the American dream, but for many in today’s sour economy and slumping real estate market, that dream has lost part of its luster. Meanwhile, more and more home owners who are looking to sell are finding the rental market a viable alternative.”
“Pat Snow, a self-employed artist who recently moved from Birmingham to Austin, Texas, decided to rent out his North Crestwood home instead of putting it up for sale. ‘In two or three years, if the market rebounds, I can probably sell it and make more money,’ he said.”
“The crisis of confidence in real estate is changing long-held perceptions, said Howard Finch, dean of the Brock School of Business at Samford University. ‘The entire adult generation that’s 30-plus has been raised with the idea that real estate prices almost always go up and real estate is a sound investment,’ he said. ‘But the last few years have significantly damaged confidence in residential real estate as an investment, and for that reason, a lot of people are more inclined to rent and put those marginal dollars in some other type of investment than their primary residence.’”
“A true real estate recovery won’t happen until there is meaningful job creation, said Tommy Brigham, chairman of Birmingham’s Ark Real Estate Strategies, adding that the longtime mantra of ‘location, location, location,’ has been replaced by ‘jobs, jobs, jobs.’”
“In the meantime, people hanging on to their homes because they’re afraid of losing money in a sale should consider the options they’ll have if they do sell, he said. ‘They might get out by selling low, but look at what they get by buying low,’ he said. ‘They’re really getting a much better bargain in the end.’”
The Bradenton Herald in Florida. “Sales of existing homes and condos were up in Manatee and Sarasota in May while pricing was down. Angie Cegnar, current president of Manatee Association of Realtors, said she has been involved in real estate for 37 years, and the current marketplace reminds her of the 1970s. ‘There are great, huge deals in condos right now,’ she said. Some waterfront units that were selling for $450,000 have dropped to $190,000.”
The St Petersburg Times in Florida. “Despite repeated efforts, real estate agent Colleen Tuttle had no luck swinging a short sale on behalf of a client who offered the bank $800,000 in cash for an Apollo Beach home with a stunning view of Tampa Bay. So Tuttle was frustrated and angry that an investor group got title to the house for just $10,010 in February after the homeowners association foreclosed. ‘It may not be illegal, but it’s immoral,’ she said.”
“State Sen. Michael Fasano said he plans to propose legislation that would require homeowners associations to notify lenders when they start to foreclose, thereby giving the bank a chance to pay the delinquent fees or kick-start its own foreclosure action.”
“Bush Ross, a Tampa law firm that represents Andalucia Master, said associations are moving against delinquent homeowners because banks are taking so long to foreclose.”
“Eric Appleton, a lawyer with the firm, said associations can’t notify the banks when they start foreclosing because that would violate federal law barring communication with a non-party about a debt. Because the bank doesn’t owe the assessments, it’s not a party to the association’s foreclosure action. One solution, Appleton said, would be to make banks responsible for delinquent fees. ‘At the end of the day,’ he said, ‘banks are the ultimate beneficiaries of associations and their efforts to maintain the common areas and amenities.”’
The Palm Beach Post in Florida. “Tom and Patrice Sherhag’s foreclosure began with a missed quarterly HOA payment of $75 in October. The assessment due to the Palmetto Pines Homeowners Association in unincorporated Boca Raton grew to $318 by the end of November. In January, the association filed a lien for the original $75 on the Sherhags’ home and despite subsequent checks written for hundreds of dollars, snowballing court and attorneys costs have since upped the final bill to an estimated $4,605. The actual debt owed the association: $80.25.”
“The Sherhags, who bought their home nearly 15 years ago, are not in foreclosure with their bank. ‘This is a trap. Once you’re one month behind, it’s ‘I got you.’ said Andrew Smith, a Boca Raton attorney defending the Sherhags in the May foreclosure filed by the association. ‘Why target someone who is one month behind?’”
“The law allows associations to go after debtors with foreclosure actions that make them responsible for paying legal fees. For some associations, especially those with units abandoned by investors, a repossession can be an effective way to regain lost dues by allowing it to take over the home and rent it out until a bank’s more lengthy foreclosure process concludes.”
“Eric Glazer, an attorney who specializes in homeowner association law in Hollywood, said while it’s unusual to pursue a foreclosure for small debts, he understands why some associations do it. ‘The question becomes are you supposed to wait for two years of assessments to be late,’ Glazer said.”
“Still, he said there are alternatives, such as setting up payment plans. ‘If you go through the very expensive route of foreclosure, $75 becomes 20 times that overnight,’ Glazer said. ‘Associations need to realize that people have fallen on hard times and these aren’t just investors going delinquent.’”
The Herald Tribune in Florida. “The buzzword in the real estate industry these days is ‘inventories.’ In Sarasota County, inventories had fallen to a 5.8-month supply of homes and a 7.4-month supply of condos at the end of May from a 22.9-month supply of homes and 24.3-month supply of condos at the end of May 2008.”
“But while the drop in inventories has agents throughout the region cheering, there is reason to believe the trend will be short-lived: Piles of unprocessed foreclosures are stacking up inside and outside the court system, caused by delays from the robo-signing fiasco that began in September.”
“‘There are 330,000 open foreclosures in Florida right now and that number would be much higher if it were not for the temporary suspension caused by the foreclosure-processing mess,’ said Jack McCabe, a Deerfield Beach-based real estate consultant. ‘Foreclosures will definitely ramp up again later this summer and fall and we will see inventory numbers go up again.’”
“‘In a normal market, declining inventories would be a good sign, but this is not an normal market by any means,’ McCabe said. ‘Half of all sales in recent months have been distressed properties, and 50 percent have been cash deals because financing has been relatively unavailable. These are not symptoms of a healthy market.’”
“Many recent sales have involved investors, who will put the houses and condos back on the market in the next 12 to 18 months.”
“Real estate agents counter, but it is also possible that banks will not be able to ramp up their foreclosure processing as much as expected in the months ahead and consumer demand will rise enough to meet any increased supplies.”
“‘Most of the distressed properties that will come on the market will be priced at less than $350,000, and we already have a less than six-month supply in that category,’ said Stephen L. Lingley, an agent with Signature Sotheby’s in Venice. ‘I also believe that banks won’t be dumping 2,000 properties a month. They can’t process that many. The courts can’t process that many. We’re more likely to see a couple hundred a month.’”
I thought this was interesting from the AL article:
‘In some areas, the stability of the rental market has been muddied by rising numbers of single-family homes being put up for rent instead of for sale, Andrews said. In Baldwin County, for example, large tract developers have dumped inventories of unsold homes into the rental pool. That’s also happened in the Birmingham area to a lesser extent, he said.’
‘And in cities across the nation, foreclosed homes are being added to the rental rolls. There is a danger of flooding the market, Andrews said, and there’s pressure not to exceed certain price points. ‘The higher the value of the house, the more pressure there is to approach those thresholds, so it’s harder and harder to find a rental pool,’ he said.’
Also, about this:
‘The entire adult generation that’s 30-plus has been raised with the idea that real estate prices almost always go up’
If this is true, the housing bubble has been in existence a lot longer than 5 or 10 years.
“If this is true, the housing bubble has been in existence a lot longer than 5 or 10 years.”
Yes, who was it here that said, “the buying opportunity of a lifetime was before 1998?”
If you are a hyperinflationist, today is a great buying opportunity.
It’s not just housing. Pretty much everyone in the United States from the baby boomers forward was raised on the idea that the stock market was a guaranteed winner, such that all you had to do was park your money there and do nothing other than pay periodic fees to your mutual fund managers in order to get rich. That’s not true anymore; thus the “Greenspan put” and the gigantic American flag on the stock exchange building. Those rises were the product of a unique set of circumstances which are not going to be repeated, but we’ll never accept that answer.
One thing the beliefs in asset prices have particularly encouraged is the degrading of actual labor. During the housing bubble, a flipper in a raging bubble market like Miami could make more by holding a completely fungible condo or tract house for twelve months than someone making the median income would earn over that same period. Why work, if that was the case? Weren’t there middle-aged people who simply dropped out of the work force and lived off home equity?
Weren’t there middle-aged people who simply dropped out of the work force and lived off home equity?
You should be more terrified about all the people who tried to double-dip from that process, in keeping employed and also spending their home equity. Wait, it was a triple dip, since they also spent down their savings. Economic activity in the USA became extremely overheated from that sort of stuff, and when it retreated, by 2008 it had crashed three major industries in the USA — housing, banking, automotive — to initiate the Second Great Depression.
It’s not just housing. Pretty much everyone in the United States from the baby boomers forward was raised on the idea that the stock market was a guaranteed winner, such that all you had to do was park your money there and do nothing other than pay periodic fees to your mutual fund managers in order to get rich.
Wasn’t that the premise of the “Millionaire Next Door” or some other similar book? Save 10% of your income every year, starting as ayoung pup, save it in a mutual fund, and you will become rich.
“Wasn’t that the premise of the “Millionaire Next Door” or some other similar book?”
Not “The Millionaire Next Door”; that book was all about profiling a group of millionaires that most people would generally realize were even millionaires. They tended to be small-business owners who did not live a flashy lifestyle at all.
They were millionaires due to their businesses and restraint, not due to stock market investing.
Maybe that’s the modern version of “Richest Man in Babylon”? Same thing, just with gold.
‘The entire adult generation that’s 30-plus has been raised with the idea that real estate prices almost always go up’
Almost? That’s not how I heard it. What was that LAY quote again?
You’ll have lower prices under deregulation than you will through regulation.
Kenneth Lay
I meant Leslie Applehead…
“They can’t process that many. The courts can’t process that many. We’re more likely to see a couple hundred a month.’”
The courts don’t have too. All that has to happen is panic set in on those holding high end property and watch the pricing slide to new lower levels.
‘There are 330,000 open foreclosures in Florida right now and that number would be much higher if it were not for the temporary suspension caused by the foreclosure-processing mess…’
‘I also believe that banks won’t be dumping 2,000 properties a month’
We’ve gone from ‘there is no shadow inventory’, to ‘buy a house, the banks are effectively manipulating the shadow inventory.’
Instead of playing along or even participating in this, the govt should be investigating. This is likely the largest market manipulation in history.
This is likely the largest market manipulation in history.
And it just keeps going, Ben. The government not only does nothing about stopping it, it continues to act in full encouragement of the fraud. It’s all gone too far; the momentum will determine our fates. Once food stamps and SSI get cut, then the real social unrest will start.
Food stamps and SSI must be cut, consequences be damned.
Food stamps and SSI must be cut, consequences be damned.
Show me why using logic, comparisons to revenue and historical tax rates compared to now, historical corporate tax receipts as a percent of our GDP and these program’s costs compared to other programs such as defense.
Consequences be damned.
Food stamps and SSI must be cut, consequences be damned.
People say that, then poop in their pants when the riots begin in their communities.
I still remember the Rodney King riots. Even in faraway and relatively safe San Diego people were really scared that it would spill over into “America’s Finest City”.
I’m all for cutting foodstamps and SSI, as long as there are jobs out there that people can work at and pay enough to provide for their families. And before someone smugly says something trite like “if you can’t feed them, don’t breed them.” it is worth remembering that a lot of these people once had decent paying jobs before the big offshoring juggernaut steam rolled them.
Cutting Food stamps fraud or abuse, ok, but starving the bottom end of society, mothers with children and all, doesn’t sound like a great place for us to start. If the FedGov wasn’t shoving trillions up the bankers behinds, they wouldn’t be bidding up the global price of foodstuff. Let’s cut the bankers up, shall we? It would be OK if some of them later need foodstamps.
There are some people who get support who don’t need it. That is different than fraud. It is the way the system is set up.
My uncle and his husband have adopted three kids who were once in the foster care system. While in foster care, the kids were eligible for WIC until they were 5. To encourage early adoptions for the children that were eligible, they remained eligible for WIC until 5 even f they were adopted. Did that family need their diapers covered (while applicable)? Did they need the free five pound hunk of cheddar? Did they need 30 eggs a month per child? No. It was nice, but no one would have been hungry without it.
Here’s the rub. Some people who were foster parents weren’t as middle class as my uncle and his family. And some of them loved their foster kids and wanted to adopt them. And some of them would have had to take into account the loss of free food before deciding if they could complete the adoption. So they kept their WIC so the funding would still be available when the next kids came along.
Don’t see how to fix it other than fully funding the program so state officials don’t have to worry about their levels going down and never being able to get them back up again.
The government was supposed to be there to represent your right as an individual but today it represents the rights of corporations and any requests, expectations that we may have for “government” to act on our behalf indicates that we haven’t realized what’s going on.
Wow, what a bunch of reasonable people:
“Plagued with pets that do business in all the wrong places, dog owners in the Village of Abacoa, a condominium association of 458 units, must pay a $200 fee starting Aug. 1. The money will pay DNA Pet World Registry to take the dog’s genetic fingerprint and keep the information on file.”
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/dna-samples-will-determine-if-jupiter-residents-arent-1568967.html
What if one dog eats another dog?
“What if one dog eats another dog?”
I think the HOA then forecsloures on each of the owners dwellings and sets their cars on fire. If the unit has a “Red Sox” flag attached to the house, the house skips repossession and is summarily demolished.
I thought you said “sets their cats on fire”.
LOL. Naw, I wrote that because it seems like a Florida thing: every six months or so you read about someone trashing someone’s car over an HOA issue / “Your Team Here” issue.
Good one.
I thought dogs ate cats?
Or these stupid, greedy HOAs can eat me …
I have heard that quite a few banks these days are opting for something called “cash in lieu of foreclsore”. IOW, they pay the FB a few thousand dollars, and the FB just signs the deed over to the bank. Seems like the bank can get around the delays of the court system this way, especially in cases where the FB isn’t even living in the house, and they know they are eventually going to lose it anyway.
They aren’t signing over the deed, in effect. They are quit-claiming their interest in the cl*sterf*ck, leaving the lender only the investors and government to worry about. Really, the borrower was the only real troublesome part of the equation, since he could hire a lawyer and smooth-talk a judge into throwing out the foreclosure due to all the funny and missing paperwork on the lender side.
“Metro Atlanta’s already distressed housing market now must absorb a new blow: the closing of one southside military base and deep cutbacks at another”
So now even the military jobs machine is starting to sputter.
Metro Atlanta has turned into another slice of hell, from what I understand, for a number of reasons. Over development, major Mexican drug hub, lots of relocation from places like Detroit by people looking for jobs and not finding them.
I wouldn’t touch Atlanta with a ten foot banana. It’s gonna be one hot summer there this year.
” lots of relocation from places like Detroit by people looking for jobs and not finding them”
We get a lot of that in our little burg. Our town, along with neighboring communities north of Denver (like Ft. Collins) often makes those “best places to live” lists.
My wife works at the library and they get a ton of people who apply for a library card just to use the PCs in the library to job hunt. They have out of state DL’s and the pattern is:
They show up, get a library card
Job hunt (most likely on Craigslist) for a week or two.
Give up and move on to the next El Dorado.
She says that the number of people who do this is simply staggering and they can’t add more PC’s fast enough.
LOL, I’ve been doing a lot of research on Western North Carolina, going to visit Hendersonville (outside of Asheville) later this summer.
The Asheville area was also named “one of the best places to live”. I’ve been reading the Western North Carolina threads on the City Data board. (BTW, an awesome board if you’re thinking about re-locating somewhere and want to get the local perspective). Lots of people just sort of go there on a wing and a prayer, too. Except a lot of times they don’t move on and become part of the rather large homeless community.
A lot of the local posters there are so sick of out of area posters all excited about “moving to Asheville” that a common question is “Do you have a job lined up?” So much so, that one of the mods had to jump in and remind them it’s not an appropriate response to questions like “How are the restaurants in Asheville?” (Do you have a job lined up?) “What is the general price range of a 3 Bedroom home in the Arden area? (Do you have a freakin’ job lined up?) “What are the winters like in Asheville?” (Don’t even THINK about coming here unless you have a job lined up!) “Where can I go if I get a hangnail in Asheville?” (If you don’t have a job lined up, STFU!)
Having grown up in one of those places that seem like a slice of paradise to an outsider but has very few jobs, I find that hilarious.
“In two or three years, if the market rebounds, I can probably sell it ”
I wonder how often that pencils out. It seems like the FBs don’t consider opportunity cost?? or time value of money.
The part of this story that bopped me over the head was this:
“Pat Snow, a self-employed artist who recently moved from Birmingham to Austin, Texas, decided to rent out his North Crestwood home instead of putting it up for sale.”
Like Pat, I’m a self-employed artist. (Insert drama-quote about highly variable income, the tremendous amount of effort that’s involved in finding work to keep the income coming in, and yes, you’ve heard it all before.)
One of the things I’ve learned about the business of art is that you need to keep the rest of your business footprint as small as possible. This is important because you need to put the energy into your art.
I can’t help thinking that the absentee landlord thing is going to be a huge headache for Pat. (Heck, being a landlord is hard enough when you’re in the same town!)
Absentee landlording is precisely the sort of thing that his art career does NOT need.
I think that, in two to three years, he’s going to be stuck with this house in a glutted resale market. And an equally glutted rental market.
That’s my take from Tucson…
For South Carolina, the biggest condo crash was around the statium in Columbia. Several multi-story condos in the middle of an industrial area and they only play 6 games a year at the stadium. The housing crash was mostly along the coast. It is still crashing. Greenville SC seems to be doing OK.
They bought condos to be near the Gamecocks stadium?
Redfin.com
June 2011 Roundup
Howdy Redfinnians!
The latest real estate numbers came out yesterday and, as we predicted last February when every economist was headed for the hills, home prices increased in April for the first time since July 2010. Some of this was seasonal and real prices are probably flat.
Prices have stabilized because the supply of homes for sale has been falling, more than most folks realize. We’d be optimistic except that buyers, like sellers, are also waiting for better days. Applications for loans to buy homes haven’t been this low since 1997. After a monster June in our own business, Redfin’s July will be mediocre. To keep growing, we have to take a lot of market-share.
A Silent Spring, and Now A Quiet Summer Too
That’s bad news for the housing economy because July is usually Christmas-time for real estate agents. This year, however, the stores are a little empty: there are very few homes to buy, and very few shoppers too. Prices will be up and down for the rest of the year — after being very bearish in 2010, we are sticking to our contention that the big drops are behind us — and sales volume will be very low.
…
When Will The Hormones Kick In?
In the standoff between buyers and sellers, no one seems likely to blink in 2011. Over the last three years, when nobody else wanted to sell, the banks would step in and unload half a million foreclosures, forcing prices down; today, banks are tired of taking losses and lawsuits on foreclosures, and instead just modify the loan or agree to take a smaller loss on a short sale.
Before that, buyers kept the party going, snorting up liar loans in the bathroom then macking on the first house they saw, driving prices up. Now, the market looks more like a middle-school dance, with buyers and sellers waiting one another out on either side of a large, dusty gym. It’s always hard to say when the hormones will kick in; maybe in three months, maybe in three years.
For now, that’s our take on the market. As usual, we’d love to hear yours, too, as we post the whole newsletter on our blog for folks to discuss. Happy July 4th, and thanks for supporting Redfin!
Best, Glenn
Glenn Kelman | CEO, Redfin
So I wuz in a big box store over the weekend and some guy took a fit because no one was waiting on him. He about went into orbit, implying it was because of his race. Which was BS because the store was woefully undermanned, as I can attest, I was just as frustrated as he was. But anyway one of the things he says with great indignation while he’s complaining to one of the managers is “I live in ___________”. As if he lived in Buckingham Palace.
I’m not gonna mention the name of the development here. I really felt sorry for the guy. The development he mentioned is one of the biggest clusterfarks EVER! It was built on a very nice piece of property along a very nice part of the river around here. In the beginning, houses ranged from quarter of a mil up to a mil, although I’m not sure anyone ever paid a mil. Then the bust happened.
What a mess. I can tell you that _____________ now has homeowners who paid a quarter of a mil living across the street from and next to renters and people who paid as low as $80,000. OUCH! That’s gotta hurt and I know one guy who is feeling that pain, having paid a quarter of a mil. The resentment is so thick you could cut it with a knife. To add insult to injury, the promised clubhouse and pool and other facilities are still a gleam in the eye of the HOA.
To top it off, the place has gotten a bad rap due to alleged gang activity in the area, and “youthful pranks”. One of the posters here used to live there as a renter and couldn’t leave fast enough.
Yes, living in _____________ means you’ve arrived. In hell.
He about went into orbit, implying it was because of his race
Irish right?
I dunno, all I know is I kept hearing “I live in _________, I live in __________”. As if that meant something. But to him, I think it did and I just wonder how many people have had their dream of living in a nice place busted by the bust.
This neighborhood used to be Tucson’s equivalent of Compton, California.
Then, during the big-bad housing bubble, a funny thing started happening. Middle class people who were priced out of other areas started buying houses here. I was one of them.
My priced-out middle class cohort was preceded by the same-sex couples and artistic types who tend to be the “pioneers” in any urban area that embarks on the comeback trail. One of those same-sex couples is still here and they live in the next block. They’re getting on in years, but they’re still in kicking-good form when it comes to taking care of anything that goes wrong around here.
dunno, all I know is I kept hearing “I live in _________, I live in __________”.
You east coast folks are funny.
You’re stumping me on that.
It’s in Ruskin. On the Little Manatee.
A cryin’ shame, too. I used to live in that general area. Nice, quiet part of town. Parts of it very pretty, too, along the river. This development could have been awesome, had it been done right. But they put up all the crapshacks hodge-podge as fast as they could and like I said, none of the promised common facilities.
Of course, there’s also a number of crappy trailer parks in the area, too. And it was not far from that development where a couple of guys got mowed down on Thanksgiving weekend.
Hey Palmetto,
Let me give a hint:
It’s River____!!!!!
Parrish Dave, where’ve you been, buddy?
I’m tellin’ ya, the more I hear about your former ‘hood, the more interesting it gets. You must be soooo happy to be outta there.
I’ve been very busy the last few months. I’ll try to splain it all soon. Glad you’re doing well.
snake, I don’t know if you’ve been down around South Hillsborough County lately, but it has turned into one crowded sh*thole, IMO. We really got hit with the ugly stick as a result of the bubble and bust. The traffic is not to be believed. I don’t know where all the people came from, I’ve heard different stories. Some were “re-located” from the Tampa and St. Pete inner city. The illegal immigrant population ballooned, driven by the magnet of new construction. Some have come from places like Town N’ Country, trying to escape the gang activity. Some of the MacDill AFB crew moved to the area. And there’s always an influx of new retirees to replace the ones that bit the biscuit. Today when I stopped at the gas station there was a small car with Michigan plates that looked like Escape from Detroit. We have two massive USDA financed “Homes for Hillsborough” developments. The old one from the 1970s has turned into a slum, I had to take a detour through there the other day and couldn’t get out fast enuf.
And to top it off, we’re expecting another wave of illegals. Why? Because Alabama and Georgia passed some strict anti-illegal immigant laws. And what state does Alabama and Georgia border? Bingo! Florida! Where the state senate and house wussed out on following the lead of Alabama and Georgia.
Never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I almost wish for another active hurricane season here.
Was Escape from Detriot a real movie?
If, not, it should be.
I rarely travel to that part of the county, but based on what you have written believe it would be better suited reverting to tomato fields.
The basic problem I have is that the last fifteen years of development here, some of which overran south Hillsborough, created nothing but ugly sprawl. It was so bad that it made what preceded it look OK.
In the past, whenever I went to Lowes and couldn’t find what I came for, I used to complain (mainly to myself inside my head) about being ignored and not being waited on. Now it’s the opposite — I find that in order to break their boredom from too few customers, the “associates” are all over me, more than eager to help me look for something (even when I don’t need any help), hoping I will buy something.