Best quote from a troubling Bloomberg piece on Florida’s messed-up housing industry which has a building boom in the midst of a housing bust:
“Have you been to Miami lately?” Florida Governor Charlie Crist said at a homebuilders’ conference last week in Orlando. “It’s like we have a new state bird: the building crane.”
Some factoids from the piece:
- Housing is 20% of Florida jobs, but 10.6% nationwide
- Florida will likely tip into recession by October
- Developers are gambling on retirees and a weak dollar
- Florida banks saw a 43% jump in the first quarter in delinquencies
- Last time Florida real estate crashed it was by building too much stuff people can afford, this time it’s from building too much that people can’t afford
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