[PATRAIN]

My family says the economy down there is borderline depressionary. That makes sense seeing that the last depression was headed up by Florida after the real estate bust of 1926. There were homes and land that sold for more than the peak of 2005...never to recover. I guess history does repeat itself. My question to all that live in Fl. How are you preparing and or how have you changed your lifestyle to meet these sad times we live in? Here in PA, originally Fl. native, It's just starting to creep into our neck of the woods. Store sales are off, real estate has slowed to a crawl, but we're still o.k. I can, however, here the winds a-howling as winter approaches. Heatings going to be a killer, literally. I had someone say that if things are so bad...where are the soup lines? Your not going to see any probably because of food stamps and food pantries. Food stamp requests are up 10% on avg. yoy. Food pantry usage up 20% in some areas of the country.

[compelled to reply]

The only difference I see from two years ago is

A. A bunch of for sale signs.
B. Residential construction is stalled.
C. Occasional ugly foreclosed home.
D. Food pantry traffic has been up significantly. I donate and they can hardly keep up with the demand.

Other than that, the stores are packed and oddly enough there is still a lot of new offices, shopping and restaurants coming up. I see a real estate depression and a slight cyclic economic downturn/recession here that is largely fueled by the real estate bust and a very active repo man (credit bust).

[runswithscissors]

It's not borderline depression. It's borderline recession. An adjustment.

A simple problem of a bunch of people who shouldn't have been homeowners being granted scam mortages, and a bunch of greedy homeowners who couldn't understand what a temporary bubble was, so they HAD TO withdraw all their fake equity out so they could keep buying more handbags and vacations.

Oh yeah, and a bunch of corrupt government officials and financial companies all swearing to each other, that "everyone deserves a home" and other phoney ways to steal citizens' money, including the Bush Administration.

[PATRAIN]

hotpads.com and click on foreclosures......Now for Vero Beach....aahhh good old Vero...I was raised there on the beach near riomar and the old Saint Edwards. Great place to live, however, the mentality of the of the beach folks was always "what bad economy?"

[TANaples]

Originally Posted by PATRAIN

My family says the economy down there is borderline depressionary. That makes sense seeing that the last depression was headed up by Florida after the real estate bust of 1926. There were homes and land that sold for more than the peak of 2005...never to recover. I guess history does repeat itself. My question to all that live in Fl. How are you preparing and or how have you changed your lifestyle to meet these sad times we live in? Here in PA, originally Fl. native, It's just starting to creep into our neck of the woods. Store sales are off, real estate has slowed to a crawl, but we're still o.k. I can, however, here the winds a-howling as winter approaches. Heatings going to be a killer, literally. I had someone say that if things are so bad...where are the soup lines? Your not going to see any probably because of food stamps and food pantries. Food stamp requests are up 10% on avg. yoy. Food pantry usage up 20% in some areas of the country.

We have both a condo and a single family. The condo, IF they even sell at all, have gone WAY down. The highs in 2005 were very close to $200,000. The last two that even sold were in the range of $55,000 to $75,000, not much more than they were new in 1984. Where we are now in a golf community, they have not gone down much (enough). They were built in 2001 and the prices then were in the mid $200,000s. People have tried to sell in the mid $500,000 range, but the last two that were sold, including my next door neighbor, were in the mid $400,000 range. No, we didn't pay that much ($285,000) because ours was an estate sale and she just wanted to get rid of it.

My daughter has been looking in NY. Long Island hasn't gone down much from 2005, maybe $75,000 for the average in the $400,000's. In the city, Queens, they have not gone down AT ALL, try $500,000 for a tiny 2 bedroom. However, the property taxes are VERY LOW in NYC. In the $2,000 range for that $500,000 house. NYC COMMERICAL property supports all the private homeowners.

[linc]

Originally Posted by runswithscissors

It's not borderline depression. It's borderline recession. An adjustment.

A simple problem of a bunch of people who shouldn't have been homeowners being granted scam mortages, and a bunch of greedy homeowners who couldn't understand what a temporary bubble was, so they HAD TO withdraw all their fake equity out so they could keep buying more handbags and vacations.

Oh yeah, and a bunch of corrupt government officials and financial companies all swearing to each other, that "everyone deserves a home" and other phoney ways to steal citizens' money, including the Bush Administration.

Spot on Scissors. The other problem is that those same people are looking to the government to fix there problem.