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Economist Article - Cape Coral, Florida - one in every 71 houses here currently has a foreclosure filing.

DragonflyProperties

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Hi all,

An article from The Economist.com. Excerpts:

AS I drive up to the dusty fairgrounds of the German-American Social Club of Cape Coral, Florida, I see an abandoned white house with peeling paint and boarded-up windows across the street. Spray painted in large, black letters across the front of the home is the word "BUST". You won`t find many homes that look quite like that in Cape Coral, but these days, "BUST" is hardly a unique condition. It`s become so commonplace, in fact, that if every delinquent homeowner had a vandal`s flair for the dramatic, defaced houses would be everywhere: one in every 71 houses here currently has a foreclosure filing.

Instead, wiped-out homeowners merely strip their properties for everything they can carry off—air conditioning units, appliances, light fixtures. Homes sit empty with wires dangling out of their stucco exteriors where sconces should be. Banks that own foreclosed properties might try to keep the weeds down, in hopes of attracting buyers. Might. Plenty of empty houses have front yards full of high grass, obscuring realtors` signs that beg passers-by to make an offer. This is ground zero in America`s housing crisis.

Then the housing market collapsed. A city of little more than stucco homes and strip malls, Cape Coral depended on home construction. With that gone, unemployment has shot up in the past year, from 5.7% to 9.2%. That`s one of the largest increases in the year-over-year unemployment rate in the country, and one of the highest current unemployment rates around. And those numbers might actually under-represent the pain felt here. Everywhere people talk about friends and neighbours moving back north to live with relatives instead of sticking around to look for a job.

The pain is not isolated in the construction sector. With no one hiring, Denise Stiles lost her job at a human resources company, and the value of the investment property she bought has tumbled from $150,000 to $25,000. "Usually this place is jammed", she says, explaining that they arrived early in order to claim a table. Empty tables are everywhere.
Now, Ms Stiles explains, Cape Coral residents are hoping that enough people migrate south for the winter this year to keep the economy afloat. If few come down, lots more houses might find themselves sconceless.


http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displa...00&fsrc=nwl

Keith
 
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