Economic Winners and Losers
Our economy has seen better days. The stock market is temperamental, housing foreclosures have skyrocketed, personal debt and bankruptcies are up, and now there's talk of a possible recession. It's a gloomy picture. But not everyone is falling on hard times. In fact, some businesses have benefited from the economy's sad state, and in curious ways. Today we talk to Dean Foust, Atlanta Bureau Chief for Business Week about the economic winners and losers.
And we want you to be our reporters — our eyes and ears across the country. Tell us what's going on in your neighborhood, among your co-workers, and in your town: who's winning, and who's losing in the economic slump? And tell us your personal stories as well.
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I decided to quit my job after I had my son who is six months old. I just voiced my concern about the recession to my husband is a medical malpractice defense attorney. He said not to worry because attorneys are typically busiest during recessions because people are "sue happy" at this time. I'm not sure about his theory but for right now I feel like we might be one of the winner...
I am a mortgage broker and have a lot of calls to refinance but banks and lenders have tighten their rules and regs. lately that getting ridiculous!
Can the government and the lenders seriously getting together and loosen these rules out!!!
The winners seem to be those who own land, particularly the well located land. They may not receive quite as much for it as they did a year ago, particularly if they are seeking to sell it rather than rent it out. But everyone needs a place to live, and so far every living place I've seen requires land, with the possible exception of the orbiting space station.
He who has land to rent out will continue to be able to command a large share of our wages. Just as Henry George pointed out in 1879.
This is fixable, as those who have read Progress and Poverty know, by a simple and wise tax reform. But our biggest landholders like the current situation just fine, thank you, and the rest of us follow like sheep.
Check out Progress & Poverty, by Henry George. He provides a route to a society in which all can prosper.
is anyone talking about the connection between the "home ownership" touted as one of the President's early, few positive talking points and the housing bubble?
I live in Philadelphia. I don't see visible signs of the current crisis. Individually though I feel greatly effected. I have been home with my kids for past 6 years prior to that my profession was a sales manager for JP Morgan Chase in subprime unit. Although I never did any of these crazy loans in my career. I no longer have an industry to return to. I was pushed back to work because of the failing economy and had to make a career change where my income is considerably less. I really thought I would be able to stay home until my daughter reached school age We own our home and cars free and clear but could not sustain this on the one salary any longer so I am back to work 3 years sooner than I thought and I could not return to my original job.
One advantage of this recession should be better urban planning going forward.
i own a gourmet candy company and it sounds like recession might be a boon for our industry as well: many cannot afford an expensive vacation or large ticket item like TV. However, they can still purchase a comforting treat like caramel or chocolate or a nice bottle of wine
In Louisville there don't seem to be a lot of foreclosures but the time to sell a house seems very long. Lots of houses on the market, lots of houses coming off the market because they can't fetch an offer near where the owner thinks it should be.
My husband and I are winners! We did not remodel, purchase a new home or over spend. We just paid off our own home and a rental. We both are in sales (manufacturing no less) and just did go overboard. He has had a fabulous year selling CNC machine tools and I sell plastic. So we are doing very well.
I live in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina, am in the housing business, own a house and have children who own homes in the area. The national news sounds dire but there is a huge disconnect with the experiences I know of in our area. As an area, we never over-indulged in the housing bubble and it seems grossly unfair that our citizens are beseiged with the national-interest stories that repeatedly focus on the worst news possible. I'm sure it's not nearly so exciting, or interesting, to report that most "planes are landing safely" in the RTP rather than that they are crashing...but it's a disservice to the good folks of our area who had the reasonable and sensible approach to housing over the past "bubble" period.
The Savings and Loan issue made some quite rich. Are those types driving this?
http://www.cei.org/pdf/6330.pdf
Historical Perspective. On the surface, the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s and early
1990s--the cost of which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation estimates at $519 billion--
seems about the same size as the investment bank estimates of the current crisis. (These figures
include all assets in the at-risk class, not just failed loans.)11 From 1986 to 1989 the U.S.
economy grew from $4.5 trillion to $5.5 trillion.12 This means the S&L crisis involved assets of
between 8 percent and 10 percent of GDP. Today, the United States has a $14 trillion economy,
so the subprime crisis represents about 3.5 percent of GDP.13
The nation's current foreclosure rate does not appear particularly worrisome when viewed in
historical perspective.
I agree with Katie. We skipped vacations during the holidays but for a weekend treat we might go to starbucks or get ice cream. We also don't go out to eat much but I'll never give up chocolate.
Widen the discussion to include a segment not commonly included in real estate situation: Homes built to be high-perforance or "Green". Here in Chicago construction and sales seem to still be brisk.
Nobody ever talks about how the Million plus Realtors are affected by the housing dip.
As a Realtor in Grand Rapids Michigan, a real estate market that has been down for 4 years, I am really taking it in the teeth.
I am definitely a loser.
I think the winners in this market will be the home buyers of this year. I am a real estate broker in the Phoenix Metro area. This market, at least locally, is very much like the market we were in back in 1989-1991 when the RTC was the news. I think we will all look back on 2008 and say, "I wish I had bought a house then." I spend my time now trying to convince would-be buyers that this is the case and would-be sellers not to sell right now.
I live in St Louis. I am in the trucking business and I could work 70 hrs a week and make a very good living. My wife is a nurse and works as a Lab Director and make a really good living. We just refinanced our mortgage under 6%.
Homes in our neigborhood still sell with in 90 days. Our Daughter is a bank Manager who doing very well for only being 27 and our son in law is a commercial electrician who could and sometimes does work 7 days a week.
None us of have a 4 year degree. All of our friends and neighbors are working and no one has been laid off or lost their homes. I do know some people who bought homes as investments and did get burned, but so did I in the stock market. It is a gamble and if you can't afford to loses don't play. SO, life is still good in St Louis IF you work hard and play by the rules.
Its not easy to feel sympathy for the greed that has been allowed to take place in this country. I am so upset with the stupidity of these people who bought condos here for $700,0000 and more in the Fort Lauderdale, Miami area. Who would want to pay that price for a one bedroom? I am disgusted with the credit bureau and the state of affairs that have led us into this mess. I am a struggling single mom and a full time student, Florida law stinks..
The reason renters are being hit by the foreclosure boom is: investors bought 5,6,7 houses in the same neighborhood thinking they could rent them. Now the rental market is so overwhelmed that investors have the choice to cut their losses and let the house foreclose, because they will never get their mortgage payment out of the rental market.
Hello, Talk of the Nation--
I don't want to belittle the problems that are happening today in the housing market, but I would like to add a different perspective. When my husband and I started our professional lives, the best we could do on mortgage rates was 8 or 8.5 percent--and we got that only because we could get VA loans, and house payments took half of our salaries. By 1981, when we were caught up in the Carter recession, interest rates were astronomical (great if you had money in the bank), and we fought tooth and nail to keep our home. Our Florida homes both were bought at rates over 9 percent.
It is very tempting to invest in rental homes right now with interest rates and prices so low.
Thanks for your show. Always interesting.
I live on the north side of Chicago. My neighborhood has lost 50% of it's rental units in the last 7 yrs. as they have been converted to condos. Now you see conversion projects stopped part way through. That condo's are sitting empty as they were overbuilt. Now they are being rented out for less then they would have sold for. That people have had their condo's forclosed on & have limited options of where they can go since many of the apts. are now gone.
I first got my driver's license in 1964, and my family job was to be my mother's driver while she sold real estate. I had the chance to listen in on office 'rounds,' they were called, when the sales force would visit a newly listed house and discuss its merits and market potential. I learned then that one's personal residence is not an investment, but it is a hedge against inflation. In these recent years I wondered whether this maxim was somehow wrong, but I guess it has been shown to be true.
I live in an area directly impacted by the Fayetteville Shale natural gas discovery in Arkansas. It is estimated that our county alone will see a $350 million economic impact by the end of 2008. The sales and use tax revenue is up 10% over last year and government officials attribute it directly to the gas exploration. Winners are land owners, who get royalties and can participate in wells. Also owners of restaurants, hotels, etc. as the drilling crews come and go. Even real estate is steady, not great but steady.
So much of the discussion proceeds from the idea that the foreclosure crisis was unforeseen and unforeseeable. In fact, many community groups had been warning about the problem of predatory and sub-prime lending for years. Two, relatively unremarkable examples in which I was involved for example: In the late 1990s Wachovia Bank (then First Union) was buying Core States Bank in Philadelphia. As part of an agreement with low and moderate income communities the bank agreed to provide data regarding this type of lending so that the problems we see could be better understood and documented. After the Fed approved the merger, First Union refused to keep their agreement, presumably because they realized what would be revealed. Then in 2000 in a meeting with community groups regarding Financial Modernization legislation that was moving through Congress, Gene Sperling, then head of the Clinton Domestic Policy Council and now a top advisor to Hillary Clinton, said that the Administration would not fight for better tools to monitor predatory practices, which those at the meeting were seeking. So the Republican Congress passed Financial Modernization without these tools and the rest is banking history. This disaster was preventable, but those who could have done so didn't want to.
I work for McKeough Land Company, Inc. in Northern Michigan selling recreational home-sites primarily to vacation and retirement buyers. Though we have definitely felt the pinch of the current real estate market, we have also been gaining great traction from savvy buyers looking to take advantage of the incredible values the market is creating.
People who have the means of capitalizing on these opportunities are putting themselves in a "winning" position, and the real estate agents/companies that can continue to make sales and find buyers in this market are position themselves well for when the market re-ignites.
I would suggest that pre-existing home sales, whom are not in distress would be affected detrimentaly by this Mortgage crisis. WHY ARE THE MORTGAGE INDUSTRY UNREGULATED???
My wife and I argue about this, but I think that TV programs like "Flip that House" have indirectly contributed to the mortgage crisis. The underlying theme is that the mistaken idea that any "improved" real estate is bound to increase in value and there is large population of "greater fools" who are willing to pay inflated real estate prices.
Wanting to ad to my previous comment that I think it is a travesty that the Mortgage Industry suppossedly IS regulated but to whose advantage? Oregon for example is trying to implement new regulations but are being sensured by the lobbyist' from the Mortgage industry. So now the regulations that were proposed,(NO early pay off penalty to get out of dubious loans) is being dampened.
I equate the mortgage industry as it currently is regulated to sanctioned Loan Sharking. These people are criminals and without conscious. There ought to be a law!
I manage a local government conservation land acquisition program in one of the worst hit real estate markets in SW Florida. Our program is willing seller only by application. During the boom, we could not get anybody interested in the program due to the length of time and red tape that is inevitable in a government program. During this current slow down, we are receiving an overwhelming number of applications as we are one of the (or only) buyers of large real estate. Some of our best remaining undeveloped land in the County is available for sale and I could not be happier. As an added bonus, realtors bought up and combined properties from different owners to create larger properties for land development. Again, we are winners as larger is better for conservation lands and it is very difficult for a program such as this to compile meaningful larger pieces. I am on pins and needles about when this windfall ends as we are winning a small victory for environmental protection - an opportunity that may not come again for a long while and more land is lost to development.
I OWNED A MORTGAGE BROKERAGE BUSINESS FOR ABOUT 18 YEARS ,,,I WAS ALWAYS TRYING TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM BY NOT CHARGING FEES THAT MOST OTHERS DID.
THE LAST YEAR WAS SO BAD I HAD TO CLOSE MY COMPANY ,,IT WAS SAD TO LAY OFF FRIENDS.
I FILED BANKRUPTCY, MY HOUSE WENT INTO FORECLOSURE BUT I WAS ABLE TO SELL IT FOR LESS THEN I OWED AND PAID OFF THE DIFFERENCE (I WAS NOW BROKE).
I CANT FIND A JOB MOST THINK I WILL LEAVE WHEN THINGS CHANGE SO THEY DONT HIRE ME OR IAM OVER QUALIFIED .
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I CAN DO BUT SOON WE WILL BE LIVING ON THE STREET.
My, company, amazinggates.com seems to be tied to housing but sales were up 68% last year and up 6% so far this year. I don't know why we are doing so well other than trying as hard as we can. We have 21 employees in the U.S. and 75 employees in Viet Nam. My wife, a realtor hasn't sold a house in santa fe in a year!
I work for a natural parenting store. Among our products are cloth diapers. I have seen a huge increase in the numbers and types of people turning to cloth because of the economic benefits (with the added plus of the environmental ones!) It seems many practices that are good for our pocket books are also good for the environments!
I have a few acres of land and I am buying 4 organic cows and I am going to sell GRASS-FED FREE RANGE BEEF.
I will get a farm tax break and credit I will provide people in my area premium quality beef,Not the corn/grain fed beef that is everywhere now.
20 years ago all cows fed on grass the way nature intended.
