Florida Correspondence

I have been in Orlando and West Palm Beach Florida this week. When preparing for the vacation, I thought that I would see row after row of empty condo units and foreclosure signs. The reality is not exactly matching up with my dire expectations.

I know that my experience is not necessarily indicative of larger trends, but still, it was interesting to see what was supposed to be the nexus of the housing recession for myself. We started in Orlando, where there was tremendous growth during the housing boom. I asked some of the locals about real estate and they reported that there were lots of problem areas but that things appeared to be a little less ugly. Sure, there were stories of phenomenal incentives by builders, but there was also some anecdotal evidence that buyers were out again armed with low mortgages and looking for a bargain.

We visited one development in Orlando to check out the situation first-hand. Celebration is a Disney community in Orlando which looks about as close to the movie “Pleasantville” as anything I have ever seen. The perfectly manicured lawns in front of the well-kept homes should have been the first tip-off. The homeowners in Celebration would not allow the nasty realities of a housing recession to infect them. I should disclose that my brother-in-law left Long Island three years ago and now lives in Celebration full time, so I tease him incessantly about these facts. He told me that houses are still selling in Celebration and that prices have actually remained pretty firm. This proves that there is still a robust market for people who want to live in a sanitized community.

So where was the sub-prime stuff? Where was the evidence of the housing crisis? As we were leaving Orlando, I asked the hotel parking attendant where I could find the bad stuff and he pointed me in the direction of a line of condos in the distance. He said, “I am not sure that anyone ever moved in to those places, but they’re mostly empty right now.”

As we drove from Orlando to West Palm Beach, there was more evidence of the boom and bust—abandoned projects with equipment that appeared to be frozen mid-stream and hundreds of condo units and housing developments with huge signs advertising “new, low prices!” When we neared the East Coast and the ocean-side resorts, there were fewer signs, but the drive convinced me that the housing situation probably has more room to go before we are out of the woods. It many ways, it was far worse and slightly better than I thought it would be.