Crunch – Moon of Alabama

May 12, 2008

Crunch

Wimberly said he’d recently sold a home in [Atlanta’s] West End that tells the tale of what’s happened in some neighborhoods. The home sold in March 2004 for $305,000 and then in August 2004 for $700,000. It tumbled to $122,900 in a sale last year. It sold recently for $51,000.
Tax assessors boggled by housing dip

Ouch!

That house may have hit its bottom, though the article points to some homes in the $10,000 range. The next step in the downward spiral is sinking tax revenue and lots of layoffs by cities, counties and states.

Two years from now things might start to look better again.

Posted by b on May 12, 2008 at 16:42 UTC | Permalink

Comments

I’m in the Deep South. We bought our 3/2 1890 sq ft house with 3/4 acre in ’94 for 82,000.00. 3 years ago it appraised for 225,000.00. Now it’s down to 90,000.00. Guess we’ll be staying put.

Posted by: ang | May 12 2008 16:49 utc | 1

TROUBLE IN PARADISE
FORECLOSURES LOOMING FOR THE HAMPTONS’ POSHEST PADS
yowza

Posted by: annie | May 12 2008 17:24 utc | 2

Bush Proposes Outsourcing FEMA to Chinese Government
Compare and contrast with Bush’s non-response to Katrina.
In the air within two hours, on the ground leading relief
efforts same day. No wonder China never loses any lives
in typhoon evacuations. Maybe US should outsource FEMA
to far cheaper Chinese government? Yeah, that’ll happen.

Posted by: Abetter Lief | May 12 2008 18:37 utc | 3

The Giant Pool of Money. This American Life teams up with NPR News to explain the Housing Crisis.
(I know everybody here already knows about TAL, but this is an exceptionally well done episode, extremely educational, and worth checking out even if you don’t get the podcast.)It’s a nice plain-english explanation of some of the mechanics behind the whole mortgage-CDO alchemy (triple B to AAA?).
Or maybe see also, How subprime works…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 12 2008 18:53 utc | 4

Thanks for that link to the TAL episode, Uncle. I heard about half of it when it aired on Saturday here, but I had to (reluctantly) leave after the first half. It was engrossing.

Posted by: Maxcrat | May 12 2008 20:12 utc | 5

Uncle, I enjoyed the second link 🙂 (can’t listen where I am. maybe later.)

Posted by: Tangerine | May 13 2008 13:45 utc | 6

Personally, the George W Bush Economic Gift To His People has meant that there’s no hope of my family and I being able to escape these shores for a good long while. Dollar/Sterling is a disaster, housing market gone soft and the crippling mortgage our bank conned us into to shore up an ailing business have all conspired to keep us chained to the Greatest Country in the World. Hoorah, trapped in purgatory.
I genuinely dread to think what’s going to happen when the local redneck populace, hopelessly addicted as they are to everything that involves an internal combustion engine, realize they can’t afford another tank of gasoline – my neighbors’ idea of a lazy sunday is to sit on an ATV (one for each member of the family) and rev it, all day. Movement is optional. I’m not exaggerating. What is going to happen when this all-important ‘cultural’ prop is taken away? I don’t think Obama realizes just how bitter folks are going to get.
Meanwhile we plant our garden, raise our chickens and breathe deep of the country air, laden with exhaust fumes and the scent of burning trash from next door (because it’s too expensive to take to the dump). The cornfield across the street is a cornfield again this year, as it has been for the last ten at least, grown to feed cows who never get to eat green Vermont grass under the sky and whose shit – sprayed on the cornfields to replace the nutrients that the corn leached out years ago – is probably more valuable, these days, than their milk. But it just wouldn’t be right to grow food on all that lovely bottom land. Got to grow that corn. Got to feed those cows. Got to collect that government subsidy.
Sorry for the rant. I thought I’d be gone by now. I’m not cheerful about the future.

Posted by: Tantalus | May 13 2008 15:05 utc | 7

Tantalus: i fear one of the many “benefits” (for the top 1%) of high gas prices and a weak dollar is to keep amerikans stuck; to decrease our mobility. combined with the unbelievably narrow and biased perception of the world sold to us by our mass media, many of us are sure to remain ignorant, angry, and afraid; perfect dupes totally open for mass manipulation. and while it doesn’t necessarily help to stereotype our neighbors, there most certainly exists distinct social/class divides that will only widen as our economic decline continues. i’m not cheerful about the future either, and am certainly not in the position to flee to Uruguay like some traitorous war criminals i know.
what bugs me about the community where i live, is that it’s filling with people (retiring boomers) who consider this valley, where several rivers run through it, to be an enlightened, idyllic bubble of liberal toleration in a historically conservative/rural state (which it is), but what many of these newcomers don’t realize is that when the conveniences and social safeguards are slowly stripped away incrementally (to minimize awareness we’re being robbed by thugs), the sudden awareness that the corporate kakistocracy has literally pulled our future out like a rug from under us won’t be pretty, and when things get ugly, they will get ugly quick.
it’s just too bad the class war that will probably erupt in a post-cataclysm amerika will be between the merely rich, and the rapidly expanding poor, not between the top 1% so wealthy i own islands and jets, and the rest of us, like it should be. the only chance for communities like where i live to escape implosion is if we collectively recognize that only through extreme sacrifice and cooperation, characteristics many of us have had the luxury not to develop, will we make it through seasons that are menacing again, like winter.
and if it looks like sticking around a valley with a hundred thousand people when the food trucks stop coming is a bad idea, then we’ll to take the dogs and the kid, get out of town, and build a cozy earthship from old tires and pop cans.

Posted by: Lizard | May 13 2008 19:13 utc | 8

Lizard, in case you think I’m flinging names like ‘redneck’ around indiscriminately, my neighbours do actually happen to be the local clan of maniacs who are feared even by the local coppers. Stereotyping? I wish I had the luxury! There are plenty of people around here who have perfectly nice middle class neighbours – who, of course, bring their own advantages and disadvantages.
I’m not sure that the class war will shake out along predictable lines. The hoodwinking/brainwashing/self-deluding that has got us into this mess is pretty much endemic across the board. Whether the gas runs out in the family ATV or the family Porsche Cayenne, people are going to be angry, baffled and scared. It’s not the prospect of class war that worries me, it’s the prospect of millions of headless chickens running amok, looking for someone – preferably a foreigner or a non-white – to scapegoat.

Posted by: Tantalus | May 13 2008 21:42 utc | 9

my apologies, Tantalus. didn’t mean to imply you were indiscriminately using the term. i just know that in my own community class is an increasingly uncomfortable subject, one that often pits the ATVer crowd against conservationists/environmentalists, and labels do get thrown around quite indiscriminately.
but when i hear the term redneck i think of ignorance, and ignorance is a product of poor education, and the failure to educate its citizens is a failure of the publicly elected government that, so the myth goes, is suppose to act in the interest of its people, so there you go: government as the ultimate scapegoat!

Posted by: Lizard | May 14 2008 3:46 utc | 10

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