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Recession Briefing: Take the Foreclosure Tour!
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
Cape Coral, Fla., is a reluctant symbol for the excesses of the great American real estate bubble: foreclosed homes served up as tourist attraction. A shiny green tour bus takes speculators around the town looking for deals. Nearly a third of the houses in the area have been touched by foreclosure in the past three years. (New York Times)
With food-stamp use at a record high and surging by the day, an overlooked subgroup is growing: recipients with no cash income who live solely off of the government food subsidies. (New York Times)
As a result of the glut of foreclosures, agents and homebuilders across the country are complaining too many appraisals are coming in low, scuttling deals. The National Association of Realtors says nearly one in four of its members has reported clients losing a sale due to botched appraisals. (USA Today)
A gleaning of predictions from financial forecasters for the year ahead. They offer interesting and sometimes provocative views, and some of them will surely be wrong. (Christian Science Monitor)
A dismal job market, a crippled real estate sector and hobbled banks will keep a lid on U.S. economic growth over the coming decade, some of the nation’s leading economists said on Sunday. (Reuters)
The home is the new hotbed of entrepreneurial activity. For those who have temporarily joined the ranks of the self-employed, a home office is the natural (and cheapest) place to get work done. For others who are using severance packages to take a shot at entrepreneurship, the home can be an ideal incubator to test out ideas. (Wall Street Journal)
Some buyers who fled when the art market crashed in late 2008 have stepped back in recently, and a few paid record prices for masterworks. But the art marketplace, from Miami to Moscow to Mumbai, remains pockmarked with shuttered galleries, smaller auctions and scaled-down art fairs. (Wall Street Journal)
The U.S. economy is sickly, but the mood of impending doom has lifted. The response of U.S. and other authorities to the emergency is unfinished business and needs continuing attention — but in 2010, if the crisis continues to ease, the danger is that politicians will relax and minds will wander from the need for new financial rules. (Financial Times)
The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times, a sharp reversal from a long period of prosperity that is leading economists and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the underpinnings of the nation’s growth. (Washington Post)
The Obama administration’s $75 billion program to protect homeowners from foreclosure has been widely pronounced a disappointment, and some economists and real estate experts now contend it has done more harm than good. (New York Times)
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There is a lot more to Cape Coral than foreclosed homes! Cape Coral is the largest city in Southwest Florida. We have regularly scheduled world-class festivals, community gatherings, well-kept parks, national chain restaurants, cool mom and pop storefronts. more miles of canals than Venice, and a central SWFL location just a stones throw away from all the natural and cultural splendor of Fort Myers, Sanibel, and Captiva Island!