We won't get fooled again, by gimleteye

South Florida builders, through lobbyist Neisen Kasdin, are flouting a new rationale for moving the Urban Development Boundary in Miami-Dade County. Save the Everglades.

One piece goes like this: the zoning that currently exists outside the Urban Development Boundary in Miami-Dade, one home in five acres, is simply a less toxic threat to the Everglades nearby than zero lot line housing, characterizing platted subdivisions inside the UDB.

But before rushing to argue the merits of new schemes, scroll back to 2005 and 2006. During the last battle to move the UDB, in which developer applications were mostly denied because—surprise!—there is not enough drinking water in the sole source Biscayne aquifer to accommodate new development— builders trotted out to the Chamber of Commerce and pro-business allies a "top-secret" powerpoint presentation that its makers would not share with the general public.

What we know now, and what many of ordinary citizens suspected at the time was that boom championed by speculators breathlessly as "inevitable" was, even as the powerpoint slides were shifting from one graph to the next, burning in cinders.

Even today, as I write, the construction boom continues to weirdly manifest itself in dozens of construction cranes edging skyscraper condos toward foreclosure. (And all the talk about hedge funds racing to the 'rescue': now that credit market sphincter has tightened shut, we'll see what the calvary looks like...)

In light of what happened, only a few years ago, before engaging in a new argument with the developers and growth machine that employed fear tactics, intimidation, and pressure based on speculation, I am going to try and write in LARGE BOLD LETTERS so that readers can understand that their anger and frustration at the time wasted in the LAST ROUND of UDB hearings needs to be carried over to whatever numeric rationalizations we are about to hear from the same well-paid lobbyists.

Those well-paid lobbyists are not only agnostic about cause and effect of the massive infrastructure deficits that taxpayers are now burdened with, as a result of the boom built on the shoulders of fraud, they are praying for home builder clients who will continue to fork over high monthly retainer fees.

But understand what happened, during the late, great housing boom now in cinders.

One investment professional trenchantly noted a few days ago-- and should be read in the past tense, “Unlike the S&L crisis of the 1980s, the mortgage lenders of today aren't taking their own balance sheet risk when underwriting loans. These brokers get paid for quantity REGARDLESS of quality. The balance sheet risk is transferred through three entities in less than 90 days from origination. The originator will originate ANYTHING he can sell to a whole loan buyer to pass the hot potato on. Whole loan buyers are simply the aggregators of loans at the Wall St. firms that aggregate, package, tranche, and sell as quickly as they possibly can to the clueless buyer. This transference of risk is the crux of the Subprime situation. Just think about it. . .if you were a 20-something making mortgage loans ... using someone else's balance sheet and being paid per loan (with no lookback to performance of the loan), how many dubious loans would you underwrite?”

In Florida, citizens railed against filled wetlands and vanishing farmland and were clueless about the identity of those buyers the builders depended on.

The secret agent wasn't the family embracing a starter home: it was the banks in Asia and Europe on the opposite side of the deal that keeps the perception of inflation as "low" (ie. cheap stuff at Walmart) and supplied our SUV's with gasoline.

Those investors, who put the power of the US dollar back into the economy of suburban sprawl, are now putting their wallets back into their pants pockets.

So the only more clueless people would be, then, voters who fail to hold accountable the public officials who bought into the growth machine backed by liar loans, mortgage fraud, and other indicators of the lowest cost denominator, to use low quality tract housing to define the built landscape of South Florida.

So. Let's be clear: you'll have better luck finding hen's teeth in the dirt than buyers for one home on five acres in suburban Miami.

As far as builders whining about needing to move the UDB because of “inevitable” population growth and only building “what the market wants”, the actions that speak louder than words have to do with vacancy rates in subdivisions, and, foreclosures.

During the building boom built on the shoulders of fraud, year after year the development lobby plied county and city commissions and the Florida legislature to make it more and more difficult for ordinary people to intervene in the most fraud-ridden, speculative excesses of any building boom in Florida history.

'We won't get fooled again', goes the song by The Who. And we won’t.