One day we'll look back on this housing bubble and laugh and laugh. Man, how stupid could we have been?
Pretty damn stupid I'd say. Here's the New York Times, reporting from flipper-hell Florida.
IN 2002, when the St. Joe Company, one of Florida's largest real estate developers, began selling parcels in a new neighborhood here, it was inundated by potential buyers. With as many as 10 applicants for every lot, the company put numbered balls into a fishbowl, then had an agent draw the balls at random, to decide who would be allowed to buy the home sites.
Four years later, you can hear a pin drop at the gated community of WaterSound Beach. Most of the lots sit empty, and even Thanksgiving weekend brought only a handful of visitors.
As it turns out, many of the landowners were speculators who had no intention of building.
"They thought they'd sell after six months, and make a killing," said Lew Belote, an executive of Move Inc., which provides online services to buyers and sellers, and the owner of a house in WaterColor.
'People got caught day-trading lots," said Marc Levy. After years of double-digit appreciation, the market was so bad that "some of them would have been happy to sell back to St. Joe at the original price" Belote observed.
But St. Joe wasn't interested in buying back people's lots," said Jerry Ray, the company's vice president for corporate communications. "Our goal is to build towns."
December 19, 2006
When the music stopped: Land speculators in Florida get caught trying to day-trade real estate lots
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
11 comments:
classic Ponzi
classic Ponzi
"Our goal is to build towns."
****************
Ghost Towns
Ghost Towns ?
Come on, we are in Florida here! Think gigantic Halloween theme parks.
Thesame exact thing happened in the late 1920s.
In fact, when adjusted for inflation, real estate prices in Florida are a bargain compared to what properties were going for in 1926/1927. Tiny 1/8 acre parcels of what was essentially swampland far from town were selling and reselling daily. At the height of the boom, it's estimated that 50% of the population of Miami, Florida was employed in the RealEstate business.
Then a hurricane came through, everyone realized "what am I getting for the money", and in 1929 prices dropped like a rock as speculators scrambled to get out.
Read about it-- do a Google search "The Great Florida Land Boom".
Just a footnote to what I wrote earlier--- The bottom actually fell out starting in 1928-- long before the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929.
Florida Sand
Phoenix Stucco
Tech Stocks
Tulip Bulbs
what's the difference?
BRAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!1
are you white man? do you hate jews? can't stand mexicans? hate women? get wiped out in a divorce? bitter? angry at the world? wish you could turn the clock back 40 years to when a middle aged white man ran things and those kikes, niggers, spics and worst of all women knew their place?
Then you too can be a regular on the HP blog.
Oh and I have a newsletter to sell you for $99 that exposes the "TRUTH".
operators are standing by.
1-800-PARANOID
When you buy today, we'll put a tattoo on your forehead that reads t-0-i-d-i at no extra charge. That way you can remind yourself of this excellent decision when you look in the mirror to shave or comb or pluck.
Hey 1 800 PARANOID, are you trying to raise cash to make the monthly nut on that "ass clown, mental midget, I see things as I'd like them and not as they truly are" mortgage you took out last year on the house Bob Toll sold you with a wink and a nod? Were you on drugs when you signed the dotted line or were your parents closely related? Are your feet webbed? Are your eyes a spread out a little far on your face? Did you take the gold in your event last year? Can you spell the word economics? Did your friends call you “Potsy” in high school or are you just really fond of “dem French fried per ta ters”?
Post a Comment