(no subject)

[hel_ana]

So on my way to work this morning, I saw one of those handwritten plastic jobbies that are on every street corner, usually advertising cheap mortgages, weight loss miracles, private real estate, and get-rich-quick schemes.

This one said:

Handyman Special
will sell
for $204K
xxx.xxx.xxxx

The hell? How much for a handyman special now? And yet, people keep insisting that we're not in a bubble.

Comments

[the-nita.livejournal.com]

*cough*

Apparently I can't afford to live down there for yet another reason...

[hel_ana]

Ironically, the Tampa Bay region was long touted as an ideal place to live because of the low cost of living.

In the few years before I moved here, the average home price was entirely reasonable. Now, not so much.

Some scary numbers, from the St. Pete Times in a 2004 article:

The price of a home rose 58 percent in St. Petersburg from 1998 to mid 2003. In Tampa, the price is up 47 percent; in Clearwater it is up 45 percent.

And the gains are apparent whether the neighborhood is affluent or more modest: In Pinellas, Belleair Beach is up 164 percent, and Gulfport is up 85 percent. In Hillsborough, Davis Islands is up 77 percent, Old Seminole Heights is up 54 percent. In Pasco, Gulf Harbors is up 75 percent, Holiday is up 53 percent.

And some mind-blowing numbers, from the same source:

"In January 1998, someone with $100,000 to invest would have been thought a fool to ignore a historic run up in stock prices and invest instead in a house in the Tampa Bay area.

By July 2003, that $100,000 invested in a fund that tracks the Dow Jones Industrial Average would have been worth $113,607. The NASDAQ investment would have been worth $100,260. The Standard and Poors 500, the broadest market index, would have been worth $100,255

But if that $100,000 had been used to buy a home in Ballast Point in Tampa, the owner would have been looking at $186,000. In Homosassa, it would have been $207,000. Dade City, $159,000. That $100,000 invested in Uptown in 1998 would have been worth $304,000 in mid 2003."

The mind just boggles.

[cous-cous.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well they want 275k for the handyman's special on our street.

That's not just greedy, that's insane.

[hel_ana]

Comes from people getting into real estate who just shouldn't, I think.

The law of supply and demand assumes, I'll argue, a certain amount of rationality on both sides of the equation. Most businesses are run by people who have the rationality required by the supplier. However, when you get a hot real estate market, you get these yahoos coming out of the woods who only see stars and profit, and have no concept of rational business practice.