Housing Markets Go From Hot To Cool

Due In Part To Mortgage Mess, Once-Booming Areas Shrinking

(CBS)  It's hard to imagine someone leaving an amazing home in Fort Lauderdale.

Yet, for the first time since the census bureau started counting, the population in sunny Broward County, Fla., is falling, CBS News correspondent Kelly Cobiella reports.

"I was reading the tea leaves and that the moving truck was heading north, not south," said Broward County Mayor Lois Wexler.

This once-booming community gained an average of 28,000 new residents a year from 2000 to 2006. But last year, it shrank by 13,000. And Wexler is facing a $150 million budget shortfall.

"We know that we are losing revenue," she said. "The whole state of Florida is losing revenue."

Home sales in Florida peaked in 2005 at a quarter of a million. By 2006, sales dropped to 130,000 and the number is still falling. The median price for a home is down $40,000 from the height of the boom.

"People who want to buy a new home in a fast-growing part of the country find that they can't get credit," said William Frey of the Brookings Institution. "The mortgage crunch has really frozen them out, I guess you could say."

Real estate broker Zach Finn has seen his business drop from three closings a day to three a month.

"I'm extremely optimistic that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, the way things are going it can't go this way forever," Finn said.

As long as homeowners remain locked in, their local economy will be locked down. It will take a lot more than a great view to open it up again.

[forthepeopl1]

Under that forecast, unemployment, which hit a low in this expansion of 4.4 percent and now stands at 4.8 percent, will rise to around 6 percent, meaning 1.5 million people will lose their jobs. Under the worst-case forecast, unemployment jumps to 7.5 percent, meaning 3 million people would be tossed out of work.

"There would be bigger drops in the stock market and in home prices than we are now anticipating and more people out of work," Wyss said. "There would be a lot of pain all the way around."

WAIT UNTIL THIS SUMMER WHEN GAS HIT 5 DOLLARS

[forthepeopl1]

Standard & Poor''''s Ratings Services revises its outlook on Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. to negative from stable, BETTER START TAKEING YOUR MONEY AND RUNNING TO THE HILLS..

BEFORE THE FED AGAIN BAILS OUT THEIR FREINDS OF THE WALL STREET REGEIM....SCUM BAGS, BUSH LOVERS

[forthepeopl1]

BEFORE VOTING FOR THIS MAN know just who and what you are voting for... It is now time for Senator John McCain and his implementation of the John Boyden, Esq. plan to "disappear" the Navajo of Arizona, so as to profit from the sale of Coal under their land, to be brought to Justice for criminal violation of the United States own Human Rights Laws, in a pattern of behavior that mirrors that of NAZI GERMANY and it''''s Genocide of the Jews of Europe.. Along with him, officials of the Department of the Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs who arranged to embezzle the licensing money paid in by Peabody Western Coal, supposedly for use to help the Navajo, but embezzled anyway, along with officials of the Bureau of Land Management and Mines, who manipulate the wildlife rights of American Indians every year, so as to reduce their number, concentration and ability to prosper by living off the land. In the most BRAZEN coordinated effort of Genocide in History, corrupt public officials are literally murdering the Navajo of Arizona and converting their lives and their lands into instant personal gain, by selling them off under the table to mining industry and the Power Industry. In Arizona, John McCain claims there is a "Range War" going on in the Black Mesa. please go to this site and find out what mcshame is www.Acsa.net/cain2004.org

[anvilofsteel]

Posted by Sumarongi -- " The rich can afford $400.00 hamburgers and the poor struggle to buy a loaf of bread for a dollar. "
------actually, a loaf of bread just shot up a week or so ago to about 2.99 a loaf where im at.
A few days ago i saw two loaves of bread on sale as 2 for $5.00. Yikes!!

Posted by forthepeopl1 --- Actually, you''re right, the American people as a group of consumers do keep the ball rolling in this country. I keep trying to point out in posts that our national economy''s GDP is 75% from consumer spending.
If the rich want to get richer, they would pool their resources to figure out a way to create good paying jobs for everyone in this country and lower the cost of living. Then people would spend. and it would all go to the top levels of corporate america.

But instead they push legislation, to get more tax breaks to increse their bottom lines, not increase sales.
They dont hire people because they got a cash infusion from a tax cut. They hire only if they have enough business to warrant it.
They push legislation to allow industry that consumers have no choice in paying - i.e. gasoline/oil, electricity, food staples, gas heating, to do anything they want unchecked, unregulated and squeezing every penny out of hte poor and middle classes and thereby constricting their ability to buy anything else. Including medicine, car repairs, clothes, food sometimes. etc.

[forthepeopl1]

TO EVERYONE,

WE THE PEOPLE DO HAVE THE RIGHT TO SHUT THIS GOVERNMENT DOWN. AND THEIR IS A WAY TO MAKE OUR GOVERNEMNT STOP IN THIER TRACKS..

THE GREAT AMERICAN WALK OUT..THATS RIGHT FOR 3 OR 4 DAYS LIKE A THURSDAY THRU MONDAY..EVERY AMERICAN IN THIS COUNTRY DO NOTHING...I MEAN NOTHING BUT STAY HOME AND ENJOY THE FAMILY. ALL TRUCK,TRAIN,PLAINS,EVERYONE CAN AFFORD TO TAKE A FEW SICK DAYS FOR THIS..

IN ONLY A FEW DAYS OF NOTHING MOVEING IN THIS COUNTRY WOULD TELL CONGRESS AND THE WHITEHOUSE WHO REALLY RUNS THIS COUNTRY..THATS US AMERICANS... SO WHEN WOULD BE A GOOD DAY TO START THIS..

AND I MEAN IT DONT BUY ANYTHING....DO ANYTHING...DONT GO ANYWERE TO SPEND A DIME...

IT WOULD PUT THIS COUNTRY ON ITS KNEES..LIKE WE SHOULD

the great american STIKE.................

[e-mail]


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[sumarongi]

As of 2006, the latest figures I could find, 1,700,000 workers in the United States were paid at or below established minimum wage rates. At present, these workers are virtually kept in economic servitude.

That equals $24,009.440,000.00 per year spent on wages for minimum wage. That sounds like a lot of money doesn%u2019t it? Until you break it down to the figures in the table above.

If minimum wage were to be increased to $10.00 per hour the figure would increase to $35,360.000.000.00. This would increase the amount of money available for paying bills, purchasing goods and services by $11,350,560,000 per year. It would be a permanent infusion at the most basic level of the economy. More businesses would benefit from this cash flow increase than by any other means. This income would be spent nationwide and increase the income of countless local businesses.

Millions of families would be able to increase the lowest standard of living in this country. Huge numbers of people would suddenly find that they are able to stop robbing Peter to pay Paul every month. They would be more able to pay bills on time, thus avoiding millions of dollars per year in late fees that they incur now.

They could also afford to improve their lives by having a source of funds to pay for dental and health services. Services that most of them cannot afford at all now, given the present state of the economy and rising prices.

It%u2019s time to get off of the fence and do something.

[sumarongi]

Previous Federal Minimum Wage:

$5.15

New Federal Minimum Wage:

$5.85 - July 24th, 2007
$6.55 - July 24th, 2008
$7.25 - July 24th, 2009

The 2008 Florida state minimum wage is to be raised to $6.79 per hour or $271.60 per 40-hour week in July. Below is an example of why, in our present economic plight, this increase is no longer sufficient to provide a basic level of income.

If a minimum wage worker receives this amount for 52 weeks out of the year his wages will total $14.123.20 per year before taxes.

That works out to $1176.93 per month. This is not enough income to sustain a fair

Weekly outlay to maintain household
Minimum housing rental costs $100.00
Minimum fuel costs (1-20 gal. Tank) $64.80
Minimum food costs $40.00
Minimum utilities $15.00
Phone/Cable $20.00
Car Insurance $5.00
Taxes/Medicare./Soc.Sec. W/1 deduction $25.00
Total $269.80
Surplus funds per week $1.80

This leaves a total of $7.20 available each month to cover any additional outlays.
They can%u2019t even afford to have a pizza delivered. If prices continue to rise across the board over the next three months, minimum wage workers will lose more than they will have gained since the last legislative intercession.

[sumarongi]

Buckle your seat belts folks; it''s going to be a bumpy few years or more. More and more people are beginning to reach what I refer to as the desperation point in their lives due to stress. I do not condone any such violent acts. I''m merely pointing out that people in our society are losing jobs, income is failing to keep up with inflation, and a thousand other stresses, from health, marital problems, discrimination of many kinds, and a lot of other things that people perceive to be insurmountable in their lives. People are throwing their children off of bridges, shooting them and then committing suicide, crime is rising, and it will continue as our economic crisis claims more and more victims. There has always been a stratification between the haves and the have nots, but that gap has reached the breaking point in this country. The rich can afford $400.00 hamburgers and the poor struggle to buy a loaf of bread for a dollar. It didn''t matter as long as the low income and poor could somehow manage to make ends meet, but those days are ending. As an example, a minimum wage worker can no longer make enough money to pay the bills. Do the math.

[singingrick]

Bush is the worst President in U.S. history.