Blue Skies?: Miami Real Estate

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I'm passing through Miami for a meeting before we as a show head to South Carolina for our live coverage.

It is one of the kind of days that I love ... indoors. The skies are a magnificent blue, but not that clear sunny blue. Instead, they are a steely mass of shifting layers, dark thunderclouds moving in what seem like glass, superimposed planes across a field of whiter clouds in the distance. The fronds of the coconut palms are pushed back like the umbrella of a commuter walking against the wind. The water, too, is dark and roiled.

And the high-rise condos around here are blue, too. So many of them are half-finished, with blue plastic covering newly installed windows. Blue is a kind of thumbs-up color, an all-is-well color ... usually. But I wonder if these condos -- contracted during the boom of speculation -- will cost the buyers who plunked down deposits dearly.

I've got my eyes on the skies ... and the real estate. The mortgage crisis is a huge story, one with as many ripple effects, I believe, as the presidential election. I'm excited to cover the story, actually. It's great to deconstruct how this country and the economy works.

It's one of those issues you can understand on many levels: the structural nature of the economy; how different local markets are affected; and, of course, the emotional and financial cost that people holding the bag on a high-priced mortgage have to pay.

Farai Chideya

Tags: economy | real estate

5:38 PM ET | 01-21-2008 | permalink

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