One requirement of being a developer, and especially a developer of suburban sprawl in Florida wetlands, is to never look like you’re sweating. And so we read Friday's real estate section in the Miami Herald and smelled the scent of desperation.
According to Brenda Nestor, chairman of a suburban sprawl development company, “The strong economy, robust stock market and extremely favorable local environment have contributed to the success of Windmill Reserve and confidence in our homeowners."
But we also read the New York Times report of an auction of houses about a month ago, near Naples—just a stone’s throw across the Everglades from Miami.
“On average, the houses that changed hands at the auction had fallen about 25 percent in value since 2005.”
No wonder Caribe Homes, whose owner is a long-time board member of the Latin Builders Association—the organization that runs the Miami Dade county commission like a financial subsidiary—“will not only guarantee payment of the mortgage for two years, but also assist the owner in managing the property.”
Meaning: if you are a foreign investor we want you to know we are all about selling out Miami Dade county on the cheap while we take care of the asset you bought with devalued dollars. In other words, we are bottom feeders, trust us to keep your value safe.
The Latin Builders Association and South Florida Builders Association—two sides of the same coin—manipulate zoning and building permits so they can build the cheapest forms of suburban sprawl in outlying areas or wetlands.
They have done so, for decades, virtually without criticism from the Miami Herald.
Through their political influence they have ground regulatory authorities, like the US Army Corps of Engineers, into a pulp.
But you haven't read that story in the Miami Herald. No, it was the St. Pete Times, in an award-winning series, that reported how the Corps allowed 84,000 acres of Florida wetlands to disappear to sprawl during a time when the federal government policy was “no net loss of wetlands”.Wetlands reporting earns top honor
The builders’ associations routinely grab Herald executives by the lapel the way President Lyndon Johnson used to brow-beat minor officials, to talk down any criticism of their businesses that contribute so much to the Herald advertising sections.
Florida builders have always opposed anything resembling comprehensive protections for south Florida water sheds and natural resources. And the Miami Herald has dutifully failed to report on the results.
Because of the builders’ influence at Miami Dade County Hall—and mainly through one county commissioner—Natacha Seijas (read, below)—Florida builders and their lobbyists stopped science and studies that would have protected Miami's drinking water from development too close to wellfields.
Now there is cancer-causing benzene in our drinking water aquifer. (read, below.)
Today Caribe Homes is marketing its latest development for is strategic location that “provides easy access to Florida Keys, Biscayne National Park… and plenty of other entertainment venues.”
We get it. Builders consider our national parks as entertainment when business is bad, and when business is good as natural fodder for bulldozers.
Another way to look at our national parks from the builders’ point of view: they are assets of fungible value compared to stock prices, notwithstanding the fact that stock prices of publicly traded homebuilders like Lennar Corporation are down fifty percent.
The New York Times concludes, “We may now be living on both borrowed money and borrowed time.”
In Belaire Boca, Andrea Leslie, sales director of a gated community with resort-style amenities, breathlessly offers $20,000 off the purchase price to use “any way” buyers wish and “just in time for the holidays”.
We understand how the real estate section of local papers, like the Miami Herald, must print these advertising sections and how much pressure their executives are under, to keep the news from readers when the news hurts their advertisers.
But there is a broader context, too: US Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson is now flying to China with a governing board member of the Federal Reserve and six Cabinet members to persuade the Chinese that it is not in their best interests to be waging an invisible war against US workers with a low-priced yuan.
Is it any wonder that paintings at the splashy Miami art fair, Art Basel Miami Beach, fetch far more than a home or condo in South Florida?
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