Friday, January 25, 2008
Vote YES on Amendment 1
With just a few days until Election Day, Gov. Crist and news outlets accross the state continue to encourage voters to vote Yes on Amendment 1 to lower property taxes. The passage of this amendment would allow you to keep your 3% Save our Homes cap and make it portable so you can take it with you when you move. This plan brings real cuts to real people. If we don't pass meaningful tax cuts with this measure- we may never get another chance. Florida's families have suffered long enough. Cut taxes by voting Yes on Amendment 1!
Thursday, January 24, 2008
The Burst of the Housing Bubble
The housing market is in full correction mode. Tampa Bay is no exception to this nationwide trend. According to a report by Shannon Behnken of The Tampa Tribune published January 24, 2008...Sales of existing homes and condominiums in the Tampa Bay area continued to fall in December, according to data released today by the Florida Association of Realtors. The median sales price for homes in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area was $194,200 in December. That is down 14 percent from $226,800 during the same month last year. Home sales fell even further – 32 percent in December compared to the same month last year. There were 1,761 sales of single-family homes in December, down from 2,607 a year ago.
So what caused this correction? Several things. One of the first things you learn in any class on economics is that the market cycles up and down. What rises must eventually fall. This correction is no exception. What makes this one particularly painful is that so many sooth-sayers and prognosticators predicted the growth trajectory to continue into the forseeable future. August 2005 was when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. It also signaled the end of the current growth in the US housing market (to be continued...).
Thursday, January 3, 2008
'Purgatory' is One Way to Describe Tampa Bay's Market
Tampa Bay's housing market was seen as somewhat undervalued in the late 90's. That all changed with the "boom" of 2000-2005. Now at least one expert sees a gloomy outlook for the Tampa Bay area...
Robert Toll sure knows a lot about luxury home building and even more about surviving lousy housing markets. The CEO runs Toll Brothers, a Fortune 500 company with at least four dozen housing communities in Florida, including the snazzy Estates of Harbour Isles in Apollo Beach.
After listening last week to Toll discuss his company and the state of housing, I'm just glad he was never a teacher and I was never his student. He's obviously never heard of grade inflation - that Great American Tradition - when he assesses each of the Toll Brothers markets across the country. Guess which ones get the lowest grades?
Las Vegas. And Tampa. Each, Toll says, gets an "F-minus-minus."
Holy two-by-four! I was guessing maybe a "D" for Tampa. I did not realize you could sink lower than an "F." Toll speaks with a deadpan, seen-it-all, yet polite, tone. He tells analysts who follow Toll Brothers that markets are so bad that he must separate "F" markets from "F-minus" markets from "F-minus-minus" markets. These gradations, he says, go "from miserable to outright purgatory."
Now, just to clarify Tampa's housing status, "purgatory" is defined as "a place of temporary punishment or remorse." Not all Toll Brothers markets are so sinful. The CEO gives a "B-plus" to markets around Hoboken, N.J., and a "B" to parts of Connecticut. But he doles out many an "F" to Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Illinois and Chicago as well as Arizona, Minnesota, Charlotte, N.C., and Jacksonville. Orlando almost shines, by comparison, with a mere "D-minus."
In Hillsborough County, Toll's Apollo Beach development of homes ranges from $600,000 for the five-bedroom/five-bath "Regalo" home to $340,000 for the 3/2 "Mariner." Other projects in the state run into the millions. Toll ticks off the previous housing downturns of 1974, '81-'82 and '88-'91 as most Floridians can cite years of bad hurricanes. But this downturn, he says, is worse than the last one.
Lately, the pace of customers backing out of their orders is up sharply. It's not that Toll's upscale customers can't get mortgages. It's that they can't sell their upscale homes. The CEO explains why people are backing out of deals: 18 percent can't sell their homes; 17 percent walk away because they don't see the value in this rough market; 29 percent involve people who lost a job, had to move, have medical issues or died.
Toll hopes the 2008 presidential race helps his business. Not for the change of administration, but because newspapers will write more about the campaigns on their front pages - and less on the housing crisis. Maybe he's right. But all bets are off in '08 if he gives us an "F-minus-minus-minus."
By Robert Trigaux, Times Business Editor. Published November 11, 2007. Click here to read the original article
Robert Toll sure knows a lot about luxury home building and even more about surviving lousy housing markets. The CEO runs Toll Brothers, a Fortune 500 company with at least four dozen housing communities in Florida, including the snazzy Estates of Harbour Isles in Apollo Beach.
After listening last week to Toll discuss his company and the state of housing, I'm just glad he was never a teacher and I was never his student. He's obviously never heard of grade inflation - that Great American Tradition - when he assesses each of the Toll Brothers markets across the country. Guess which ones get the lowest grades?
Las Vegas. And Tampa. Each, Toll says, gets an "F-minus-minus."
Holy two-by-four! I was guessing maybe a "D" for Tampa. I did not realize you could sink lower than an "F." Toll speaks with a deadpan, seen-it-all, yet polite, tone. He tells analysts who follow Toll Brothers that markets are so bad that he must separate "F" markets from "F-minus" markets from "F-minus-minus" markets. These gradations, he says, go "from miserable to outright purgatory."
Now, just to clarify Tampa's housing status, "purgatory" is defined as "a place of temporary punishment or remorse." Not all Toll Brothers markets are so sinful. The CEO gives a "B-plus" to markets around Hoboken, N.J., and a "B" to parts of Connecticut. But he doles out many an "F" to Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Illinois and Chicago as well as Arizona, Minnesota, Charlotte, N.C., and Jacksonville. Orlando almost shines, by comparison, with a mere "D-minus."
In Hillsborough County, Toll's Apollo Beach development of homes ranges from $600,000 for the five-bedroom/five-bath "Regalo" home to $340,000 for the 3/2 "Mariner." Other projects in the state run into the millions. Toll ticks off the previous housing downturns of 1974, '81-'82 and '88-'91 as most Floridians can cite years of bad hurricanes. But this downturn, he says, is worse than the last one.
Lately, the pace of customers backing out of their orders is up sharply. It's not that Toll's upscale customers can't get mortgages. It's that they can't sell their upscale homes. The CEO explains why people are backing out of deals: 18 percent can't sell their homes; 17 percent walk away because they don't see the value in this rough market; 29 percent involve people who lost a job, had to move, have medical issues or died.
Toll hopes the 2008 presidential race helps his business. Not for the change of administration, but because newspapers will write more about the campaigns on their front pages - and less on the housing crisis. Maybe he's right. But all bets are off in '08 if he gives us an "F-minus-minus-minus."
By Robert Trigaux, Times Business Editor. Published November 11, 2007. Click here to read the original article
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