sappatoti
Posts: 14844
Joined: 10/30/2006
From: the edge of darkness...
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ghitaPVH
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unfortunanly the housing market is hurting us weekly though. right in the back pocket. no one's building. absolutly no one. they aint even putting in mobile homes anymore. the construction trade has ground to a screaching fucking halt.
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90% of our friends are in some sort of a job that is based in the construction trade. no one has work. they've gone from having so much work they cant get it all done, to MAYBE getting one job a week. how the hell can anyone survive on 3 hours of work a week? and the majority of work anyone is getting is service and repair, or maybe a remodel here and there, but most people arent even sinking money into that sort of thing..and there are so many construction workers out of business that the competition for jobs is harsh.
I can echo ghita's statement here. I live about 70 or so miles to her south, and while that's closer to the convention, resort, and entertainment center around Orlando, about 70% of the folks in my town get their income from the construction business. We've got five or six large housing communities, with homes starting at $450,000 US within a five mile radius that are now sitting completely still; no workers, no work, just dust/sand blowing in the wind. There has been no work in these developments for going on close to a year now. As an aside, I feel badly for those homeowners who took possession of their homes right as the projects started, for they've been living there all along. Not only are they dealing with constant and persistent dust and sand of exposed acre after acre literally blowing around in the wind, making their lives a daily hassle with that (both inside and outside their luxury homes), but their property values are down approximately 40% or so during the past year alone -- due to falling prices in general and the piss-poor conditions that surround their properties.
Here in our area of Florida, it's believed by those involved in home construction that the housing crisis was kicked off by real estate investors. They saw an undervalued market and would order up new houses by the thousands to be built. They would then attempt to flip them around within one year after closing on them. As an example, in 2002 my parents had a 2500 sq ft home built for $150,000. Three months later, at their closing, the real estate agent came to them with offers from investors to purchase their home for between $225,000 and $250,000 on the spot. That's for a 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath, no pool property. Within three months, the value had suddenly appeared to be that much, and that was before the house was even completed! That inflated value came about because of the investors, who were looking for a quick buck. Luckily, my parents declined the offer, for they had built their house to live in, hopefully for the rest of their lives, and not as an investment tool.
In a subdivision of 80 or so homes, 15 of them are currently up for sale, and have been, for about a year. These were homes originally ordered and bought by investors who ended up not being successful in selling their homes for the exaggerated values they thought they were going to get. Luckily, none of them have gone into foreclosure, and someone representing the those investor/homeowners is taking care of those properties, so the overall value of the neighborhood hasn't been too adversely affected. Also, the neighborhood is comprised of retired, white collar professional, and business owners, so there is no problem with residents who are satisfied with lower standards of living. Overall, the values of homes have pretty much not taken a hit in that little community.
I do believe that this housing crisis, at least in my little corner of Florida, was born of greedy individuals and companies... from the home builders/developers (excluding the subcontractors here), to the mortgage lenders, to the real estate agents, down to the real estate investors. They artificially exaggerated the home values in this area, which could not be sustained by the realities of the local economy, are now suffering with a downward adjustment.
I don't think it's fair to ask those homeowners, who bought property within their means using non-risky mortgages (in other words, using common sense) to have to bear the bailouts of any of those greedy entities that are now crying about losing money and/or are going bankrupt. If it wasn't for them artificially inflating the housing prices to begin with, there wouldn't have been need for mortgage lenders to write risky loans and aggressively market them. I know it's simplistic just to say they should take their lumps and suffer the consequences of their actions, but a whole lot more of the economy is, unfortunately, tied into this problem.
For those who can do this, the best thing to do is to sit tight and ride out this "market correction."
< Message edited by sappatoti -- 12/10/2007 9:39:42 AM >
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Never mind the man on the edge of the darkness... he means no harm...
"Community, Identity, Stability." ~ A Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, 1932
If you don't like my attitude, QUIT TALKING TO ME!
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RE: Housing prices could fall by 30 %.....! - 
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