The #1 rule of real estate - location, location, location.Originally Posted by Jordan
The #1 rule of real estate - location, location, location.
Reuters reports a much smaller number. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...89414F20121005
2 1/2 times 1.6 million would be four million homes vacant.Quoting Census Bureau data, Duke said vacant homes for sale had fallen to 1.6 million in the second quarter of 2012, versus a 2 million peak in 2010, but pointed out there were still 2-1/2 times as many vacant homes out there, just not for sale.
Freedom is a state of mind. Nobody can take that from you unless you let them.
20 million homes not collecting property taxes?
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None of the market signals are real...
Nothing has been real since the Fall of 2008.
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I just took a walk around my neighborhood, which actually has a pretty stable economy, because it is centered around the military. There are foreclosed and abandoned houses *everywhere*
So any more homebuilding just means the bubble has yet to pop. Houses are far too expensive still.
...and, I live in an area quoted in this article. I've seen Seattle as well.
Seattle has tons of vacant and foreclosed houses on any given block.
Fact is, people cannot afford the rent or buying of houses at their current prices. All the "jobs" that have been created have been in fast food or customer service.
But if you want to believe that everything is coming back, and sunshine is just around the corner, be my guest.
Vacant houses in Seatle (listed by zip code): Three areas are higher than ten percent but the populations listed are less than 10,000- the smallest populations on the list. Of the 33 zipcodes listed, 26 are under six percent vacant. http://zipatlas.com/us/wa/seattle/zi...sing-units.htm
Freedom is a state of mind. Nobody can take that from you unless you let them.
I lived in one of the areas with higher than 6% vacancy.
The area I am currently in only has 4-5% vacancy. But, they are chronically vacant. There is a nice 4 bedroom house next door that has been vacant for over 4 years. I saw on my walk, .1 miles away, two 3-4 br houses, newly vacant, but not in the "Somebody just moved out" sort of way, more like in the, "this house has been vacant for a long time". I know this, because I walked around both of them, and the garbage sitting around was quite old.
The house next door is owned by somebody in Kansas, from what I hear. There is never any movement at it, except one day, somebody came around looking for rentals, and I gave them the number of the owner. Two days later, landscapers showed up and cut the grass. That has been the only type of sign the owners are even thinking about the house. There is no for sale sign or anything.
Last edited by UWDude; 12-04-2012 at 07:00 PM.
I have alot of contacts down here in Florida along the treasure coast and up in Michigan in metro Detroit, and there just isn't any real signs of an increase in construction or suppliers selling products. The suppliers for roofing are consolidating and are completely dead, they are in a depression and are just not doing well at all. The builders I come across are not building homes, they are doing small tasks for past clients. There is an occassional house built here and there, as well as commercial. The wages they are paying the workers, and the leverage the people have over the builders paying for the home is in their favor of course too. There just isn't much going on right now. Construction is in a depression, it's in a huge state of flux that has been continuing since 08'. I sell and manage a company I'm at, but I feel the industry couldn't get any worse for those doing the actual work. It's sad to see what the actual workers are making and how hard they are working to do the work in comparison to previous times. Wages are bottomed in the industry, everyone else in the chain are trying to squeeze the rest of the money for themselves to continue on.
Alot of people I work for and people I know, have been asking me lately or telling me lately that they have been hearing commercial building is increasing. Now I know why, by these data points being put out. I'm not going to say they are not true, but I think they aren't painting a true picture of what these current data might represent. There is alot of government commercial work that our company was looking at bidding on, etc.. The problem is that the jobs are so strictly regulated including the bidding, our estimators said you need a full time estimating team to actually bid on the work, and those getting these jobs are doing them at cost to essentially keep their employees busy for the time being waiting for more work to come in or may have a strategy that is working, nobody is really sure on this, but the numbers just aren't jiving for people looking that have decades of experience in commercial work.
I've been in the trades business end of things in metro Detroit, good suburbs and now down here on the treasure coast, and can say, the trades are in a depression and nothing is as of yet looking up or pointing towards going in the right direction. There are companies like I said that are keeping busy possibly with these govn't commercial contracts, but they aren't making money. In fact many commercial projects are the same situation. It will take alot to bring the construction trades out of this slump, but it could and at some point will happen. There are just so many regulations and fees, permit expenses, insurance considerations to take into account anymmore that we are dealing with a whole new market today versus just a decade ago, it's hard to see everything just moving forward, unless it becomes like the banking industry, in which you have a handful of companies building everything in the future.
Just giving my 2 cents on what I see on the ground and from looking back to when I got into this many years ago, when it was much more free.
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