The cancelled sale was a blow to real estate agent Linda Henderson, but it wasn’t a surprise. Globs of thick, pungent oil are washing up on the shores of Alabama’s Dauphin Island, and the smell on some days is enough to drive the island’s predominantly senior population back into their homes.
It’s also enough to drive real estate agents to despair. “I can tell you that things have pretty much dropped to dead,” she says. “We were on track for our best year since Katrina. This is devastating – you can say that the spill killed the real estate recovery.”
The end of the recovery is a particularly frustrating development for the Gulf Coast states of Louisiana and Mississippi, where foreclosure rates have consistently been among the lowest in the country. The region’s relatively tight mortgage rules kept a lid on home prices during the housing bubble and prevented the boom-and-bust pattern seen in many other regions of the U.S. But just as prices were stabilizing and sales were increasing, the spill has brought activity to an abrupt halt.
“What the housing recession and Great Recession couldn’t do to property values along the Gulf, this could easily accomplish,” said real estate analyst Jack McCabe of McCabe Research and Consulting in Deerfield Beach, Fla. “It’s a knockout punch, plain and simple.”
As oil rigs shut down for at least six months and industries ranging from fishing to tourism wrestle with an uncertain future, real estate agents wonder how long out-of-work fishermen, oil rig workers and tourism providers can keep making mortgage payments. If they stop paying their bills, foreclosure rates could march higher. Prices may fall as banks auction properties to make back what little money they can.
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Maybe the message of this depression is that even if you are responsible and do the right things that other incompetents, coorupt, or greedy people/leaders can still ruin your life.
ReplyDeleteSome warned when outsourcing started and most did nothing.
Some warned when NAFDA and other trade agreements started and most did nothing.
Some warned about illegal immigrants long ago and most did nothing.
Some have been warning about the Federal Reserve for a long time and most did nothing.
Maybe it will get so bad soon that most people will be forced to do somethiing?
Even the cops are losing it
ReplyDeleteThe real estate/mortgage/banking industries will suffer enormous losses due to the oilcano. Not only the real estate values, what if the coastal areas are evacuated? Which is highly probable..Millions of homes/mortgaged abandoned, gigantic losses for the banks and mortgage companies, An OILCANO real estate bubble of unknown proportions.
ReplyDeleteI heard a Petroleum Geologist give the real story on BP's blowout this AM. He said BP is NOT doing anything to stop the oilcano, and the 2 new wells currently being directionally drilled into the existing well's casing will do NO GOOD and the oilcano will free flow for an unknown amount of time, perhaps years....
If this is true, and I firmly believe it is, the Gulf of Mexico will be the dead sea, as well as parts of the Caribbean, and the east coast of the Atlantic, yes, even Chesapeake bay, Nantucket etc, you know, where all the elites have their homes and yachts, will be ruined.
I saw a video yesterday of sheeple parents on the beach in FL allowing their children to swim and play in the oil drenched sea water. Unbelievable....
To 9:04: I couldn't agree more...I also saw on TV kids in oily water on the beach. The gulf now is hopeless, even property on/near the gulf is devalued. Foreclosures to follow if condo owners, motels can't rent out the rooms. Many will walk away and default. The loss of jobs will be massive.
ReplyDeleteand dont forget congress with uenployement every MONTH they argue the extension wasteing hours on a lousey 50 billion
ReplyDeleteas the 99 rs are going into the streets
and im on uenployement extension tier 4 they cut me off no warneing
on cspan all they say is this is the recovery
WHAT RECOVERY!
thier are no new jobs!
this will be worse than the depression
our leaders are traitors
back then they atleast being corrupt americanss
today senate congres the presidents are corrupt
and guilty of treason
i think riots will happen soon
market crash and slide into possibly
a usa general arrest the cabniet and president and call martial law would love to see congress in the fema camps