Foreclosures, Repos and chicken parts announcements in an upper middle class suburb-- swing state

[cap]

We are seeing record foreclosures and car repos (recently, I am seeing tow trucks at night... I don't think cars are breaking down). My county has 87% college graduates. You mean, you go to college and get a "good job" and you can't make ends meet? Not all the houses are luxury houses going up for foreclosure and not all of it has been "creative financing". We had a bunch of people move in from NYC. Some of real estate agents had been asking for 20% down during the boom...So not all of it is bubble madness and the minimum credit score to get a loan has been 620... higher than CA, NV, and states with really high foreclosures. On the other hand, there are some McMansions/luxury townhouses that have been sitting for over 1 year. A Toll Brothers development in a prime area has been going on for over 2 years -- still not complete; another less expensive one, has only built several houses and not all of them are occupied. This morning there was a public service announcement by the USDA about reporting people who are peddling illegal bird and poultry...(are our chicken now coming from China? or are people adultering our chickens... WTF is going on with our food?). We have a lot of farms here. Note to self -- go buy chickens from our local farms, even though they are a lot more expensive.

I moved here at the end of 2002... there were a lot of luxury cars and SUVs. Now there are a whole lot of Prius, Camry, Honda Civics. A lot of people are biking or walking into our small town. A lot of people are hanging out on the street. I am starting to notice some people are pre-partying before they hit the bar. The coffeeshops/ice cream places are doing good business... lots of folks just hanging out around these places. A lot of kids on the street at night and on the weekends... not at the malls. The kids aren't partying like they used to. My neighbor used to smell marijuana in our little common area. Not no more. We used to find empty beer bottles -- the good stuff, like Corona -- in our backyard pine trees. Not no more. Talked to our lifeguard about this, he's a recent grad with a degree in teaching. He said college crowd is drinking the nasty stuff -- not bud or Schlitz. Girls are drinking cheap vodka. He said, when he drinks Sam Adams, he sips it...

I see the elderly walking over to the Pharmacy to get their prescriptions. In 90+ degree heat, people have been driving around with their windows open. People are doing the speed limit. People aren't filling the shopping carts in the grocery stores like they used to. At meal times and on Saturday mornings, there used to be long lines in the grocery stores. Not no more. You see some grim people shopping with their eyes on the lists.

My husband is complaining that people are bumping into him as he is walking or cutting in front of him as he's driving...people aren't paying attention...their minds are somewhere else.

We are a swing county in a swing state. McCain was here a few weeks ago. Got reported in the paper but that's it. (It's interesting that the town that McCain spoke at had a large number of foreclosures). There are no McCain offices in the county. No regular McCain events. No McCain bumper stickers or signs. Nada. In '04, there was a reasonable number of Bush bumper stickers. I don't see THOSE stickers anymore. I do see Obama stickers and Obama signs :) and there is a very active Obama campaign here... I will be going to the upper portion of the county (traditionally Republican territory) later today for a doctor's appointment. I will let you know if I see anything up there.

I love my home but it's getting freaky deaky.... I hate to see what's happening in less affluent neighborhoods. I got a real bad feeling around here. I. Am. Waiting. For. The. Other. Shoe. To. Drop.

[sagetea]

1. I know what you mean...

I was talking to the secretary of our local school dist. she told me that 139 kids have been pulled out this last school year.
The parents who have been commuting up to an hour, are just simply moving closer to their jobs. The only people who are moving in town are retirees. Because of that more funding is being lost, jobs at the school are being shut down, even the janitorial positions. It is all very strange.

[cap]

2. I am seeing the moving van coming around but there are no house sales.

[cap]

3. yeah... but how about the housing sales...

or are people just up and leaving their houses for foreclosures.

[sagetea]

4. On my street alone,

There are 19 "For Sale" signs.
Nobody is even living in them anymore....at least they are trying to sell them.:shrug:

[cap]

12. yeah... up the street from me is a development of townhouses

that has been on the market for 1 year

[NMDemDist2]

5. thanks for the report

I live in a very red area of a purple state in the oil patch.

our unemployment is below 2%, if you can pass a drug test, you have a $20 an hour job. this area never got hit with the housing bubble, and there's a builder building new homes as fast as the county/city can put in the infrastructure, and resale homes go FAST. but we are the exception. we have three local banks/CUs so you can still get a home or car loan unlike the larger areas, but they insist on a down payment in the very traditional sense.

this has traditionally been a very poor area so folks already garden and most keep goats and chickens but I do notice less of the monster SUVs and more smaller cars. the local restaurants are hurting too.

EVERYBODY has a long commute here, the jobs are minimum 20+ miles outside town, lots of carpooling and vans from the companies running (which is a good thing) so the gas costs have hurt us too.

I thank the DU economy forum every day for screaming the warnings of the current meltdown so I was able to cash out at the peak of the housing boom two years ago and buy here CASH. hubby and I (after two years of struggling) now work at two of the best jobs in the county with Union protection and since we own everything outright we're in good shape.

I'm glad I'm off in the hinterlands surrounded by people who know how to stretch a buck so I can keep my head down and hopefully slide through this mess.

I'm not seeing any McCain stickers either but the blue collar guys around here are grumbling plenty about the Republicans. I get the feeling many of them will just stay home in Nov.

[Romulox]

6. Upper middle class suburb gets tastes of its own medicine; does not like it one bit.

"I moved here at the end of 2002... there were a lot of luxury cars and SUVs. Now there are a whole lot of Prius, Camry, Honda Civics."


:nopity: :nopity: :nopity:

[Prefer]

8. HAHA! I laugh with joy at their pain

because it makes me feel good to know that people who had lives I envied are now suffering.

[Romulox]

9. Not me. I weep that my betters had to give up their luxury SUVs!

I mean, where will they go???? (in their cramped compact cars???)

:rofl:

[cap]

10. it's my home...

you can indulge in some schadenfreude at the expense of other people who may well deserve it... a number of them did vote for Bush in 04 and I can't say that I miss the SUV's....but, you know, it's my home...and it's just really sad to see such a pretty place start to come apart...

the flip side of the coin is that there are a lot of artists, lefties, and gays who live in the area who will get hammered as well. It's an equal opportunity screwing.

[noonwitch]

13. It sucks for anyone to lose their home

I always wonder when people express such hatred for the upper middle classes. Like, do you really think they deserve to suffer because they have more stuff or money than you do?

I could have gotten training and employment in a more lucrative field than social work, but it's what I chose. That doesn't mean that my friend with an MBA who makes 6 digits deserves to suffer for choosing to work in a different field, and make more money.

[Romulox]

15. We live in a devil take the hindmost society...

with the highest rate of childhood poverty in the developed world. 46 million Americans don't have access to basic healthcare.

Given these realities, I'll reserve my compassion for the truly powerless, thanksverymuch!

"That doesn't mean that my friend with an MBA who makes 6 digits deserves to suffer for choosing to work in a different field, and make more money."

"Deserve" is such a weasel word. "Deserve" according to whom? I'm not the judge of what anybody "deserves". However, people can expect that the natural and logical consequences of their actions will come to pass. If you vote for Bush, driving a Lexus SUV, and live in a McMansion while ignoring the poverty all around you, chances are your day will come, and no--you will not likely earn the pity of those whom you stepped over and sold out to get there.

It's called being hoisted by one's own petard, and it's a function of cause and effect, not whether some imaginary referee or post hoc pity-party has determined that you "deserve" it.

[Flying Dream Blues]

17. By your logic then, the truly impoverished would spare you no compassion

for the loss of your home, since you are clearly so much better off than they. Where does this end?

[cap]

18. let's not get wrapped up in these posts

what's happened in your neighborhood?

[noonwitch]

19. You are assuming a lot about upper middle class people

You assume that people who drive Lexus SUVs and live in what you call McMansions voted for Bush and ignore the poor around them. Actually, assuming that anyone who voted for Bush doesn't care about the poor is not a fair statement to make, either. I'm not a Bush fan, but I know plenty of conservatives who give quite a bit of money to charitable causes. Big businesses do a lot of good through their charitable foundations, too.

You are also assuming that people with some money stepped over other people to get to their place. My friend inherited some money from relatives, and invested it well because she is good at that kind of thing. I'm not good at making money. I don't hold that against her.

[Romulox]

14. Pssst....*I* have a home too.

You don't betray any concern for my home in your posts.

Do you understand how saying, "But it's my home that's in trouble this time!" is offensive to those of us living in places that have been economically depressed for a very long time? :hi:

What if your little suburb was somehow protected from the folly (which you admit your neighbors helped bring on this nation, fwiw...) Would you be posting about how sad it is that my community is suffering? I didn't think so.

[cap]

16. I am actually concerned about your home, too...

and a lot of other people's homes. We grew up very simply. My Mom's home sold for $50K when she died. So I have lived on the other side of the tracks. I didn't mean to offend anybody by sounding like a princess. It's just really freaky to live somewhere and then see it change so starkly.

FYI, On the side, I am doing some work on the side helping the state clean up the subprime mess in Mississippi. It's a nightmare. No, I wasn't in the mortgage business but I do know where to look. Everyone's hands were in the cookie jar... and I do mean everyone's. The ratings agencies, the banks, the securities companies, the analysts, the lenders, the mortgage brokers etc. It's not just the individual homeowners (although there is a certain amount of culpability there, too, as some of my neighbors are finding out). This kind of thing happens under deregulation.

I am actually concerned about everybody's home because we are all in this together. If a certain number of mortgages goes down the tubes for whatever reasons, it impacts the rates and terms that banks offer to their customers. It would be good to just punish the guilty if their sins were self contained. But, because it is so widespread, this mess impacts the entire system and destabilizes many financial institutions and many things that are not immediately obvious.

This whole credit mess goes beyond housing: it impacts everything...auto loans are going belly up as well... the cheap credit offered by the car companies and their intermediaries is ultimately not sustainable either and they are due for their day in the crapper as well. Student loans are a mess as well...Credit cards are next on the chopping block. There are problems in short term commercial paper aka 30 day credit lines are also problematic as well. Things came to a head with Bear Stearns when the banks wouldn't even hold their money OVERNIGHT.

It means EVERYONE will face worse terms in obtaining credit...even for people with good credit and conservative balance sheets.

If I sat and thought about it, I probably could start to write a good paragraphs about the social consequences of this mess and what it means to EVERYONE .... but this post would get out of hand :)

[knitter4democracy]

7. Welcome to our world here in Michigan.

It's been like that here in Michigan for a few years and gets worse every day.

[cap]

11. sorry to hear that

so what do we get to look forward to?

[knitter4democracy]

20. I have no idea.

Scary, though.