More for sale signs around here but the houses are not moving.
Our community colleges have more enrollment but will have fewer classes, and we will probably lose Calgrants, CalWORKS, and other programs that help people get into classes in the first place. I’ll be lucky if I have a job there at all this fall semester. I am already heading into health occupations. I might not have a choice, especially after this coming academic year.
Most obvious in the City centre is the ambitious Tower that remains unfinished since the council objected to it’s new owner’s plan to use much cheaper materials for the cladding than were in the original specs. Nearly as bad are the big piles of rubble from demolished shops at the other end of town with no sign of the proposed new buildings going up. On the streets going out of town there are a lot of empty shops too. More big issue sellers and, now others have mentioned it, I realise the traffic is lighter.
As to what the shops are selling I’m noticing bargains on luxuries while staples have gone up. A number of supermarkets have expanded their bargain ranges too. Only one big chain that I frequented has gone under – Woolworths but there have been a few others. Not quite the cascade that was threatened last year but I wonder how the vulnerable businesses will cope with the slow sales of summer.
Missed the edit window: I should have said I’m in Northern England.
Austin, Texas:
Some stalled commercial real estate projects, but that’s about it. Residential development has slowed down a bit; the city where I work issues about 20 building permits a month now rather than 50 or 60. Home prices are still going up.
I’m starting to see a LOT more Michigan and Ohio license plates on the roads of Austin.
I have to amend what I said earlier. A house the next street over has sold. Maybe the others will follow.
Honestly, I haven’t noticed too much close to home. Houses are staying on the market longer, but there’s not a glut of them. My next door neighbor’s been out of work since December, though. His wife is in nursing school and they’re fairly young - I have no idea how they’re making ends meet. Family money, it must be.
I did see something this weekend, though. Driving back from my kids soccer tournament I went by a neighborhood of ridiculously huge homes in Niwot, CO. Having nothing on my agenda, I drove in to look at them. Very impressive, but 50% of them were up for sale.
These mansions are not brand new, either - they’ve been around for close to a decade.
Note: I do not live anywhere near this neighborhood.
I’ve noticed a lot more businesses offering discounts lately. Restaurants offering deals, even Cheesecake factory has new small portion/small price offerings.
I was recently shopping around for new struts on my wife’s car. I called the dealer and they immediately offered $17/hr. off their standard labor rates, but I ended up going to our usual shop because they gave me a guaranteed not to exceed price that was $250 less than they had quoted a few months before.
Even at work I’m receiving discounts from suppliers on equipment. Just last week I received a quite for a $264k laser welder, and then a few days later the company called again to offer a 4% discount and double the warranty period, without any prodding.
With the housing collapse here, I see contractors begging for work on Craigslist. Handymen who used to command $35-40/ hr are now willing to work for half.
I still see lots of people heading to work in the morning.
We’ve got plenty of For Sale signs, and a lot more For Rent signs, and a closed steel mill…but the thing that has struck me is that I’ve been seeing a lot of new TV commercials for small, local businesses…in prime time! One barbeque restaurant in particular looks like a total dive, but they are running a fairly long ad on TV. That tells me that the TV stations must have seriously dropped their advertising rates for such small companies to be able to advertise.
Oh, and my Evil Neighbor has had to finally drop the price on her house that she’s been trying to sell for over a year. I think she was asking way too much for it to begin with, but it is immaculate. Since she moved out a year ago, I think only a few people have looked at it. She’s gone through three real estate agents. It’s not a foreclosure situation, but I think people are looking for a bigger bargain, and there are a lot of other houses to chose from, so I think they are just sniggering at what she wants for such a tiny place.
Do tell more. I’m curious about why you’re using laser welders (and who the supplier is!). PM me if you don’t want to derail this thread.
In Cincinnati:
We got a stellar deal on a house back in the fall. It wasn’t a foreclosure but had been on the market for six months. Even by realistic values it was a good deal.
It came with a delightful interest rate on the mortgage, of course. Yay!
We contributed even further to the economy by then getting married. We got some great deals there, too, although it was admittedly off-season. Still, after all that spending there’s no blaming on the economy on us.
At the community college where I work, enrollment for the summer term (which starts in three weeks) is up 29% by headcount and 42% by credit hours. Of course, this only offsets the ghastly cuts to higher education funding from the state. Oddly, the head of the office that administers the admissions test says that traffic is way, way down for them, even compared to before the downturn.
Business at Mr. Bear’s factory, which supplies mostly Japanese automakers, was way down but is creeping back up. They laid off all but a skeleton crew, who then worked 32 hour weeks for about a month before alternating those with 40 hour weeks for a while, and now are back to almost all 40 hour weeks, with occasional overtime. Mr. Bear is hoping fervently for some rehiring, as time worked is now time very busy.
I switched to an off-highway commute after the move, so can’t say whether traffic is much changed recently, although it sure looks just as packed from my vantage point on arrival. As of January it was definitely as backed up as ever.
There haven’t been any notable rashes of business closings, at least not around my usual haunts. In fact, one little restaurant building that’s been vacant for a few years, aside from a very short-lived diner, recently opened offering the best Italian I’ve ever had and seems to be making a go of it. We’re doing our best to proselytize on their behalf.