The Daily Soak - July 29

Just "Bouncing Along the Bottom" in Southwest Florida

Fishkind & Associates real estate analyst Michael Timmerman delivered an upbeat housing forecast yesterday during the Urban Land Institute's "Market Trends: Are We There Yet" meetings held in Naples and Fort Myers. On the Southwest Florida housing status quo, Timmerman said, “We’ve finally gotten to the point where we’ve reached a bottom as far as housing starts, existing home sales and new home sales. We’re kind of bouncing along the bottom. I don’t think we’re going to see any reduction in volume again." Looking down the road, Timmerman feels potential buyers will clear another psychological hurdle once we know who our next president will be. “Once we get past the election, that’ll get people to the point of ‘OK, now we know what our leadership is.’ And depending on where they are, who they are, they will begin to move forward.” Following that logic, we're only 97 days away from renewed buyer interest.


Cultural Elitists Bash Proposed Wal-Mart for Downtown Miami

Thousands of new condominiums have come online in Miami's downtown corridor since 2005, but there's one big problem: the dearth of big box retailers means residents must drive 15-20 miles to shop for affordable goods. Fortunately the success of a recently opened Midtown Target has prompted the boys from Bentonville to consider building a Wal-Mart in downtown Miami to anchor the ambitious CitySquare project. While most downtown residents welcome the news, some elected officials are turning up their noses and casting rather pathetic stereotypes. "Visualize a Wal-Mart customer in his pick-up truck, and family of four, driving past tuxedo-clad Arts Center guests,'' opined one elitist commissioner's aide. Developers are quick to point out the downtown Wal-Mart would obviously be designed to blend with the more modernist CitySquare, while the world's largest retailer is also giving greater thought to revamped interior design. Downtown residents like Fred Joseph may have some initial NIMBY reservations, but when pressed by the Herald on whether or not he would shop there he confesses, "Yes, I love Wal-Mart.''


Why The $300 Billion Bailout Will Promote Victimhood

Fresh off this month's Florida hatchet job, Time returns to South Florida to tell the world about the HousingBath. And what better place to showcase a recovering housing market than a city where half of the homes and almost all of its condos are geared toward low-income residents. Miami Gardens provides the perfect backdrop for Time to extol the virtues of the $300 billion housing bailout and really pump the victimization angle. In so doing, The Foreclsoure Crisis: Who Gets Help unearths one of the bailout's fatal flaws: the subjective nature of allocating billions once those dollars trickle down to the local level. Local government officials are already salivating at the prospect of doling out billions to their constituents in an election year and "envisioning rules for the federal aid when it reaches Miami Gardens." So how will they decide if a homeowner like Tatrisha Harvin is truly a victim for not having read her loan docs? Harvin doesn't seem worried. When asked her thoughts on the $300 billion bailout, her response somehow rings less than grateful. "Seems the least they could do."