According to the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, the number of initial license applications for real estate brokers dropped 71 percent between the reporting year 2005, the height of the building boom, and 2007.
51, 497 individuals applied to be real estate brokers at the apogee of the biggest speculative bubble in Florida real estate history. In 2007, only 15,054 applied for licenses.
The unsustainable growth of the real estate sector had many cheerleaders, who helped persuade local elected officials through their lobbyists and the Chamber of Commerce that more pavement needed to be poured, more roadways needed to be laid down, more wetlands needed to be filled, and more critics to be branded "radicals" or "Luddites".
"You can't stop progress," they said.
Today, tens of thousands of acres of environmentally sensitive lands have been lost to suburban sprawl in Florida. A big percentage of the forcible voices who opposed stronger land use regulations, to pump up the home building boom, have been flushed out of the industry. That is a fact.
To read more on the political origins of the world-wide credit crisis, buried in Florida politics tied to real estate development, read our archive: Housing Crash.
1 comment:
This is one of many signs that we do not need to build new power plants in Florida, that our electricity demand can be met by the existing plants and end user efficiency. We will need to decommission the coastal nuclear plants anyway as the sea level rises to prevent widespread radioactive contamination.
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