Dec 23

“Going Green” is usually a positive phrase. Business that go “Green” are looked at as innovators and use this for a market advantage. It is hard to say anything bad about this type of greeness

However the way the city of Milwaukee is going grheck scares the heck out of me. .

As I drove the Southside neighborhoods finishing up our annual fall exterior surveys of our properties, I was shocked at the number of green boarded and abandoned homes and duplexes in that area. Even more than there were in spring

This is downright scary for someone that is heavily invested in the area such as myself, as well as I am certain, for those living in the neighborhoods.

The cause is pretty clear … a government that hated rental housing so much that they felt anyone with a pulse should be a homeowner.

We will pay for this for decades in depressed values, far below not only the top in 2006, but below even the prices we saw in late 1990’s.

Ironically the push to make everyone a homeowner in the middle of the last decade will reduce homeownership over the next couple of decades. Those first time home buyers who crashed and burned just a year or two out of the gate clearly will have second thoughts about trying their hand at this again. When their kids grow up and say “Dad, I’ve decided to buy my first house!” their parents will suggest they’ve gone mad.

This is terrible for the long term health of these neighborhoods as a lack of owner occupant buyers will suppress prices.

The only silver lining in all of this is those of us landlords that didn’t buy into the whole silly money thing six or seven years ago are finding that our occupancies have increased simply due to a lack of supply out there.

From my beginnings in the industry in 1977, all the way through 2006 there was a constant barrage of newcomers to the industry replacing those who busted out or wanted to retire.

Today I do not see them even with prices so depressed that land lording should look good to anyone with a pencil and paper (the way we did performas back in my early days) or a copy of Excel (the way the wiz kids of the 2000’s did theirs)

Yet no one seems to be buying.

Hopefully that will change in the next ten years when I plan to be selling ….

One Response to “Gone Green”

  1. […] from the 2008 housing bubble hasn’t been out much. I wrote about what I was seeing in the past  and again here It is much worse […]

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