Sunshine State: Darkness at Noon

[Tybee Island]

Re: Sunshine State: Darkness at Noon

It was wonderful to live on Biscayne Bay as I child until my early 20's.

[BiscayneSunrise]

Re: Sunshine State: Darkness at Noon

It was wonderful to live on Biscayne Bay as I child until my early 20's.

No doubt. When you mentioned the keys regressing to a 1960's mean, I had to still my beating heart.

Today, the upper bay is a madhouse on weekends. The good news is that, even now, the lower bay on weekdays is still quiet and idyllic.

[Tybee Island]

Re: Sunshine State: Darkness at Noon

I could tell you stories of parties at Stiltsville and the Columbus Day Regattas over those years that would make a sailor blush.:p

[BiscayneSunrise]

Re: Sunshine State: Darkness at Noon

Is there any data that breaks down the foreclosure rate by county?

My guess is that most of the numbers are coming from the gold coast and Ft Myers area.

Given that, the foreclosure numbers in the troubled coastal areas must be even higher.

[BiscayneSunrise]

Re: Sunshine State: Darkness at Noon

I could tell you stories of parties at Stiltsville and the Columbus Day Regattas over those years that would make a sailor blush.:p

Ah yes. Back in the day. Never witnessed much of that personally but I have cousins and friends that grew up on the bay also; lived it vicariously through them. Something about the area here that makes people uninhibited.

My background is in the NE and Caribbean. Which reminds me of the booze and drug smuggling in the 20's and then the 70's.

More recently, our inhibitions and questionable behavior centered around gross over investment in real estate.

[Tybee Island]

Re: Sunshine State: Darkness at Noon

I saw a wonderful national foreclosure chart by county just the other day and can't locate it now. Here is something from Realty Trac: http://www.realtytrac.com/mapsearch/...eclosures.html

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Sunshine State: Darkness at Noon

...the Buyer would either elect to self insure or pay for insurance which is exorbitant for the Keys.

does self insure = having no insurance?

[cjppjc]

Re: Sunshine State: Darkness at Noon

does self insure = having no insurance?

Yes .

[don]

Re: Sunshine State: Darkness at Noon

Is there any data that breaks down the foreclosure rate by county?

My guess is that most of the numbers are coming from the gold coast and Ft Myers area.

Given that, the foreclosure numbers in the troubled coastal areas must be even higher.

One of my wife's cousin picked the Ft Meyers fruit a year or so ago. When her aunt told her, she gasped- No! No, don't! Too late. They thought they had made the deal of the century. Now they hate it. Their neighborhood is a ghost town of foreclosures and walk-a-ways. They're so blub-blub underwater...well, we know the story here at the Tulip.

(On the Keys a good friend of mine is Jack Kearns, something of an infamous spear fisherman in his day. He's told me a few stories of when the Keys were the place to be- between Hemingway's time and the gentrification plague)

[BiscayneSunrise]

Re: Sunshine State: Darkness at Noon

Yes, the Keys (and The Bahamas) are indeed magical places. Part of the whole Hemingway mystique. Unfortunately, both highly dependent on cheap energy and both likely to revert to some pre gentrification model again.

As for Ft Myers, I have cousins and friends there and hear the same stories. Thinking about regression to the mean: Miami and the gold coast area should hold up relatively well in terms of population and tourism. Ft Myers will revert back to a sleepy backwater.

[due_indigence]

Re: Sunshine State: Darkness at Noon

"The only bit of good news in the report was increased loan production, with year-to-date 2009 loan totals of 2,032,973 (28 percent FHA) versus 1,903,723 (16 percent FHA) for the same period in 2008."

How is this good news? FHA is producing loans with a huge REO overhang. Price discovery has at least one more leg down to go, which in itself could precipitate another cascading decline --let's call it the irrational de-exuberating' effect. There will be steals in the near-future.

For now, they're producing more accidents waiting to happen.

[Tybee Island]

Re: Sunshine State: Darkness at Noon

Define deals? I quietly monitor the descent and I think you can go fishing for at least the next 2 years (and more likely 4 yrs.) and not miss a thing.

Until the Banks are forced to recognize the losses, we stand in a stalemate. Unlikely under this administration and perhaps only after a wholesale reorganization of the entire banking structure induced by the demands of our creditors outside the oligarchy's control.

[due_indigence]

Re: Sunshine State: Darkness at Noon

Oh I agree. There's no rush with a 22%-to-10% troubled-to-forclosure rate and (last I read) 700,000 REO properties in America of which a disproportionate number are in FL. I think the government should burn down 2 million dwellings in select areas, sort of a surplus milk campaign. At the peak we were doing 1.4 million a year. Now we're around 600,000 (circa mid-50's levels). Don't quote me as this is off the top of my head. I might add there was a school of thought that natural attrition and household formation in the US could sustain 1m per annum. This echoes the early 60's crowd who suggested we had 'defeated' the business cycle. Yeh right.

However I believe diuring the abnormally long 14-year building boom (read: recessions and contractionary business cycles are curative periods not to be averted!), we constructed 4 million 'surplus' homes.

Burn baby burn.

[Tybee Island]

Re: Sunshine State: Darkness at Noon

Absolutely agree on the surplus argument and it begs the questions as to why new home building is proceeding. The National homebuilders lobby has seen to their survival along with massive tax carry back concessions signed into law just last week.

With Fannie and Freddie offering "rent your home" programs, this goes on for a long time.

This is playing with the heads of the older generation who were taught to believe that owning a home was the sure path to wealth creation. I can tell you from a poll of those over the age of 60 yrs. old, they are babbling like children lost in the woods. They can't understand what happened.

My Father-in-law, who I quote here often and who is my "man in the street" when I take a pulse of the situation, is bewildered and frustrated and is sitting with dozens of homes he accumulated over the years and has rented profitably for the past 25 years, until 2008 that is.

[Wild Style]

Re: Sunshine State: Darkness at Noon

Yes, the Keys (and The Bahamas) are indeed magical places. Part of the whole Hemingway mystique. Unfortunately, both highly dependent on cheap energy and both likely to revert to some pre gentrification model again.

As for Ft Myers, I have cousins and friends there and hear the same stories. Thinking about regression to the mean: Miami and the gold coast area should hold up relatively well in terms of population and tourism. Ft Myers will revert back to a sleepy backwater.

Hey Biscayne,

I don't know if you read the latest numbers but since 2007 broward has been depopulating and I think they said Miami started losing population as of the beginning of this year. I personally don't see down here doing so well given the fact they have no real industries. With peak oil, high gas/input prices and less jobs I figure people are going to leave. Although I believe Miami will probably do better than Broward (which has close to nothing going for it.)