Yesterday, mega-developer Jorge Perez abruptly dropped plans for The Related Group's highly controversial condominium development at Mercy Hospital on Biscayne Bay, with its planned units at $3 to $10 million. The decision had nothing to do with the outpouring of civic objection to the proposal, that had been warmly embraced by local city commissioners and green mayor Manny Diaz. There is no point in throwing good money after bad; a perspective easier to swallow if you didn't buy into the housing asset bubble mania in the first place.
Today's news: the paid advertising section of Friday's Miami Herald "Home Guide" has more articles touting auctions than sales. There is "Eureka Gardens", and bidding on its final 10 units that will "again start at $123,990 for a home that was priced at $259,990 just a short time ago." Minimum bids at "Radius", a new high rise condominium in Hollywood, will start at $90,000, which is "approximately 60 percent below the previous asking price." 41 luxury condominiums at The Edge will be auctioned with bids starting at $95,000, "which is approximately 70 percent below previous asking price."
The unraveling is just beginning.
The derivatives guru Satyajit Das writes: “… Within the financial sector, de-leveraging is well advanced. In the real economy, however, it is still in the early stages. Fairy tales in financial markets focus on the “superhuman” abilities of regulators and governments to avoid this de-leveraging.”
In 1931, Treasury Sec. Andrew Mellon explained how the de-leveraging process works to President Herbert Hoover: “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. Purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. … Enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”
A sobering thought spoken by a financial genius from the depths of the Great Depression. Did he have in mind The National Association of Homebuilders now agitating for more government bailouts and "incentives for homebuyers". Or, perhaps the deadbeat owners of condominiums like the one described on the front page of The Herald; "He frequents the pool at the Venetia condo building. He leaves his Jaguar with the valet. He uses the gym. He's also behind on his mortgage and isn't paying his condo association fees."
An entire class of spin doctors who once paid for braces, vacations, and mortgages thinking up names of developments like "Radius", "The Edge" and "Eureka Gardens" and hustling zoning changes are looking for new lines of work. Maybe he is one of them.
In The Herald's "Condo panels fume about bank inaction", Julio Robaina, chairman of the Select Committee for Condo & Homeowners Association Governance in the state legislature, told an angry crowd of condo owners saddled with maintenance and other special fees accumulating on their shoulders from the growing list of foreclosures, abandonment, and loss "who find themselves going up against lenders who are benefiting from a $700 billion bailout." Robaina "said he was initiating discussions with South Florida's Congressional delegation about whether any of the rescue funds could be directed to the battered condo communities, many of which were at the center of speculative buying during the boom."
"It's time for us to start negotiating that money be used for you," Robaina told the crowd.
What's a local elected official to do, with no developers pounding on his or her door, no long lunches or dinners or all-expenses paid trips to the Caribbean for "fishing" on the executive jet and Bertram.
I suppose that "friendship" will never change, just discounted to fit the tenor of the times.
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3 comments:
I wonder what Robaina's position is on the UDB line? Perhaps he can weigh in on the 7,000 more homes being proposed outside the Urban Development Boundary!
Dear Red States...
We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota , Wisconsin , Michigan , Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.
To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss. We get 85 percent of America 's venture capital and entrepreneurs.
You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share. Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.
Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.
With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.
With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.
We get Hollywood and Yosemite , thank you.
Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy folks believe you are people with
higher morals then we lefties.
Peace out,
Blue States
Dear Blue States:
I cannot express how sincerely I apreciate your statements. With your unspoken permission I will shout them to as many who will listen - you ROCK! Thank you for articulating what needs to be said. I think this country needs to be divided into two countries, as it already seems to be. If the Republican's find another way to steal this election I will be moving to Canada...just in case I am learning how to sing the Canadian anthem and saying Eh, before every sentence.
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