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My parents own a place in Lauderdale Lakes, near 441 & Oakland Park. I spend a few weeks there every year since 1992. Every year, I feel less and less inclined to return. What is happening to the area is truly demoralizing. It used to be an okay place to live. Today: Pawn shops, liquor stores and bail bondsman. Even Wal-Mart and Walgreens (which used to be open 24 hours) won't even stay open past midnight. What is going on...
Lauderdale Lakes... lol. Little Haiti of Broward.. Literally only 5 cops at any given time in that entire city.
I hope you sold the place before its worthless.
And of course nothing is open 24 hours, anything that's open gets robbed or stolen from.
Oh, but some of the posters have said the economy is just booming here so why would anyone ever revert to crime like you see all the time on the news and read about in the newspapers here?
Some seem to want us to believe that Fort Lauderdale is this place of golden opportunity but don't bother to look at the reality of the job situation here. It's mostly corporate service industry jobs here and corporate service industry entry level jobs pay low, low, low wages and there's no competition for workers here anymore because all the independent companies that used to have respect for their workers have pretty much been run out of business by big box competitors or sold off their property to a luxury hotel or condominium developer.
More progressive states and cities that aren't all about catering to low paying corporations so politicians can brag about how many jobs they have brought to the state, which are mostly minimum wage jobs in Florida, have raised their minimum wage dramatically which you are not going to see happen in Florida because it's run by Republicans who sit with their inherited wealth or in their high paying job daddy got them at the country club and blah blah blah on and on about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and making something of yourself while they raise the rents as high as they can on their run down properties in the Fort Lauderdale area that a lot of people are stuck living in because it's so hard to save the money to get out of this place for most people who want to leave because of the low wages and high rents, and there are a lot of them because most normal people don't enjoy living in the conditions of high poverty coupled with the high crime levels that exist here, unless you've got enough money to insulate yourself in a neighborhood by Las Olas, in Coral Ridge, in Wilton Manors or up in one of the residential high rises in downtown Fort Lauderdale.
There is no Amazon here raising the pay of it's workers to $15. an hour and there's nothing even close to it to compete for workers with the batch of low paying corporations that have planted properties here to take advantage of the low wages they pay their workers while reaping huge profits off of tourists willing to pay the high rates here rather than risk going to someplace warm outside of the U.S. on vacation where the crime rates and poverty are even higher than here.
Face the facts folks! The City of Fort Lauderdale has a poverty rate on par with the poorest state in the U.S., Mississippi. Only a fool would call a city with a poverty rate of 20%, a "booming economy." Booming for who? Fact: The Fort Lauderdale area is rated as the 3rd most expensive city in the U.S. for housing
in relation to what the average worker makes here. San Francisco is number one in the U.S. and Sarasota, Florida, is number 2.
Last edited by HotandHumid; 10-09-2018 at 02:40 PM..
You're Watching Too Many Investigative Reporting Shows
Quote:
Originally Posted by sailingsam
With all due respect, you have no idea what you're talking about. You are 100% WRONG.
In a previous post you made you DID refer to 'working' people as you mentioned "CEOs and other executives" that were working elsewhere. But even if you weren't referring to actively working people, YOU'RE STILL 100% WRONG.
You mention how the State Of Florida doesn't care if you say you're a resident if you're really not, and they don't really check, etc. SURE... that's probably correct. But that's also because Florida has no Dept. of Revenue division for STATE INCOME TAXES. So those people aren't depriving Florida one way or another, hence the reason Florida doesn't care.
But what you seem to miss, because you don't know what you're talking about in regards to State Income Taxes, is that the other states that DO have state income taxes and where you claim these wealthy people "spend most of their time and spend their money in those locations"... those states have VERY STRICT revenue enforcement agencies and CRIMINAL enforcement agencies. They don't mess around. If some wealthy person spends "most of the year" in California or NYC, for example, but has this so-called residency in Ft. Lauderdale that you claim 'so many' do, they'd BE IN JAIL.
You have no idea how strict and diligent those other states are when it comes to income tax enforcement... ESPECIALLY for wealthy dividend income recipients.
Could some people be breaking the law and doing what you say? Sure, I wouldn't doubt that. But is it so many people that it's having any affect at all on Ft. Lauderdale real estate prices? IMPOSSIBLE.
So again, I'm sorry, but you're 100% WRONG in your speculation that all these wealthy people are buying up property in Ft. Lauderdale to claim a residency to skirt taxes in other states where they spend most of their time.
Oh yeah, like in Chicago where law enforcement is trying to control record numbers of random shootings, we're supposed to believe that some law enforcement agent is sitting staked out in front of a house for a year to watch a car that keeps going in and out of the garage with Florida plates on it.
I can just see the agent with the news cameras on him knocking on the door and telling the owner that he needs to come down to headquarters and answer some questions about why he's parking a car in his garage for over a year with Florida license plates on it while a few miles away, several people have been shot but no law enforcement was able to come quickly to the scene of the crime because they were all staking out homes of people suspected to be owning property in Florida so they didn't have to pay local taxes on their stock dividends to the city of Chicago.
I think you need a reality check and to turn off the television once in awhile and get out and see how the real world operates.
Who told you it was a golden opportunity to live/work in Ft Lauderdale?
Who told you the jobs paid decent?
You should read some of the posts on here from people who try to make this seem like some sort of paradise who say they have a fab paying job, they never have their power go down during hurricanes and they live downtown and leave their door unlocked and have never been robbed or had a home invasion happen like the ones you see on the local news here all the time.
When I lived in South Beach and owned a condo there on the second floor above the street flooding that has happened there because of rising sea levels, a friend recommended that I move up here during the real estate boom some years back and get into selling real estate here since he said he knew people who had paid off $100,000 debts by selling real estate here.
I ended up working at three different real estate brokers who were as shady as the next one.
One office had the secretary screening all the calls so although I was out there handing out my card to anyone who would take it, all the calls that came in for people wanting to list their homes, etc., for sale went to the broker or his son. The son was blatant enough to put up a listing he had for a condominium that had been a for sale by owner who I had given my card to just the day before. The broker had a rule that our cellphone numbers couldn't be on our business cards, just the number of the real estate office.
The next place was convincing it's agents to go to classes where they were talked into buying software and other needless things to manage their listings, even though as new agents they didn't have any listings to manage.
Of course, the brokerage got a percentage of any sale of software to it's agents and they got free reception services on the weekends by telling the agents that if they would man the phones, anyone calling in to see properties or list a property would be our customer.
I received only one phone call on a Saturday because that broker didn't have a rule about having the office phone number on agent business cards during the height of our season here on eight hour stint on the phones and that was for an agent that needed a code to get the key out of a lockbox to allow here into an apartment to show to one of her customers.
The last broker I worked at told me I should spend my money on advertising listings from long time agents in his office that I could take people out to show because the listing agent would still get a commission if I sold the property and they were so busy they couldn't handle all their customers.
It didn't take me long to figure out that was a total waste of my money because the listings I was advertising were the worst overpriced dumps in the area that were still available to show during the real estate boom here because nobody wanted them at the prices that were being charged and because of the condition they were in for the price.
Selling real estate here didn't exactly end up being the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow people were making it out to be and the money I went through trying to sell real estate here after putting myself through real estate school here. Working at what I thought were reputable brokers caused me to have to file bankruptcy and ruined my great credit rating that I'd had all my life.
I can see why one of my friend who works for a truck rental and storage company told me that lots of normal decent working people are moving away from here and often leave with the comment to her that they wish they had never moved here in the first place.
By the way, I found out pretty quickly also that most of the long time agents in the real estate offices I worked in at that time didn't actually show much at all in the way of property. Some of them told me they were investors and the only reason they were registered with a broker was that the law in Florida required it for them to be registered with a broker so they could have access to the MLS property listings.
They told me the broker didn't care that they weren't involved in sales because they always listed the property with another long time real estate agent in the office so the broker still got their commission on the sale. They told me they only came into the office to check for new listings that they could buy and flip for huge profits at that time when the real estate market was booming here before the big crash that created the last big recession we had in this country.
You should read some of the posts on here from people who try to make this seem like some sort of paradise who say they have a fab paying job, they never have their power go down during hurricanes and they live downtown and leave their door unlocked and have never been robbed or had a home invasion happen like the ones you see on the local news here all the time.
When I lived in South Beach and owned a condo there on the second floor above the street flooding that has happened there because of rising sea levels, a friend recommended that I move up here during the real estate boom some years back and get into selling real estate here since he said he knew people who had paid off $100,000 debts by selling real estate here.
I ended up working at three different real estate brokers who were as shady as the next one.
One office had the secretary screening all the calls so although I was out there handing out my card to anyone who would take it, all the calls that came in for people wanting to list their homes, etc., for sale went to the broker or his son. The son was blatant enough to put up a listing he had for a condominium that had been a for sale by owner who I had given my card to just the day before. The broker had a rule that our cellphone numbers couldn't be on our business cards, just the number of the real estate office.
The next place was convincing it's agents to go to classes where they were talked into buying software and other needless things to manage their listings, even though as new agents they didn't have any listings to manage.
Of course, the brokerage got a percentage of any sale of software to it's agents and they got free reception services on the weekends by telling the agents that if they would man the phones, anyone calling in to see properties or list a property would be our customer.
I received only one phone call on a Saturday because that broker didn't have a rule about having the office phone number on agent business cards during the height of our season here on eight hour stint on the phones and that was for an agent that needed a code to get the key out of a lockbox to allow here into an apartment to show to one of her customers.
The last broker I worked at told me I should spend my money on advertising listings from long time agents in his office that I could take people out to show because the listing agent would still get a commission if I sold the property and they were so busy they couldn't handle all their customers.
It didn't take me long to figure out that was a total waste of my money because the listings I was advertising were the worst overpriced dumps in the area that were still available to show during the real estate boom here because nobody wanted them at the prices that were being charged and because of the condition they were in for the price.
Selling real estate here didn't exactly end up being the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow people were making it out to be and the money I went through trying to sell real estate here after putting myself through real estate school here. Working at what I thought were reputable brokers caused me to have to file bankruptcy and ruined my great credit rating that I'd had all my life.
I can see why one of my friend who works for a truck rental and storage company told me that lots of normal decent working people are moving away from here and often leave with the comment to her that they wish they had never moved here in the first place.
By the way, I found out pretty quickly also that most of the long time agents in the real estate offices I worked in at that time didn't actually show much at all in the way of property. Some of them told me they were investors and the only reason they were registered with a broker was that the law in Florida required it for them to be registered with a broker so they could have access to the MLS property listings.
They told me the broker didn't care that they weren't involved in sales because they always listed the property with another long time real estate agent in the office so the broker still got their commission on the sale. They told me they only came into the office to check for new listings that they could buy and flip for huge profits at that time when the real estate market was booming here before the big crash that created the last big recession we had in this country.
It's been common knowledge since the beginning of time that realtors and developers are not to be trusted.
They're liars and cheats. Big time.
People know this.
What else is new?
Selling real estate here didn't exactly end up being the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow people were making it out to be and the money I went through trying to sell real estate here after putting myself through real estate school here. Working at what I thought were reputable brokers caused me to have to file bankruptcy and ruined my great credit rating that I'd had all my life.
You failed at Real Estate because you didn't sell any real estate. Its not anyone else's fault.
Agents at huge companies fail all the time and agents in tiny companies succeed all the time.
Sales, Especially 'selling yourself', isn't for everyone and apparently it wasn't for you.
get a 9-5 job, save 25% of your paychecks, live below your means, and before 2 years you'll be getting dozens of credit card offers again and your score will skyrocket.
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Why Oh Why?
