A rising tide

   I have been reading a bit of the posts here on Active Rain again after a brief hiatus. Barely three months into my new job and I have a hard time relating to the majority of the posts in here.

I still enjoy the points made on many of the old staples, and have found some new contrbutors that have found thier voice here on this platform. My day to day issues are no longer the same. I don't need to read about the dangers of overpriced listings, I have found they are all overpriced.

     If this is truely the case, when life serves lemons, then enjoy lemonade.

Months of intense study of my new field has shown me that the days of the tail wagging the dog are over, for a while at least. Its interesting as I sit in on meetings with many who shape our policy. The builders and the overbuilders. It is more & more  interesting to listen to what these people feel has caused our current state of woe. One overpriced listing is not the question here...its what to do with hundreds of inventory homes that are eating up their balance sheets. How did these very smart people get caught in this predicament???

My job has entailed calling on the Dept Heads of many of the national builders to discuss the wholesale purchase of subdivisions that are not able to continue. I talk to many of smaller builders too, but they are getting harder to find still in business..Its really a shame...The conversations as to why the failures occured seems to be pointing fingers always outward. I hear a familiar trend. Its the banks, the mortgage companies, the Realtors, the Fed and its liberal policies that allowed the other guys to bring the house down.

As I talk to one very bright, highly talented, soon to be out of work individual after another, I remember an old mind twister. Maybe you will get it on the first try, I did not.

If a ship in the harbor has a ladder over the side with 10 rungs showing at low tide, and if the rungs are 6 inches apart, how many rungs will be left showing at high tide when the harbor tide rises by 2 feet??

If you said 8, you are .........wrong..that is what I said in about 15 seconds before I remembered..the ship is floating. when the tide rises, so does the ship. Those that said 10 rungs are to be commended. 

That is the basis for my post. A rising tide lifts all ships the same. When the loosening mortgage standards were continuing to get crazier, all parties had to go along with the dangerous financial moves. As it got more and more out of hand, all the parties on the ships in our financial harbor were being lifted, and all the parties KNEW the tide would go down one day...We experienced a rising tide like many of us have never seen, but that should not have allowed more stable heads, the ones who should have been in charge, to allow the lunacy to occur.

The tide is still going back to normal levels now, and many ships in the proverbial harbor are overburdened with the load placed on them during the very high tides.....There is no way the ships can float in this overweightened situation, there must be massive offloading to create a floatable balance again.

This is what I hear from my time on the street. We are continuing to experience the tide going out to normal levels. Its the balance of life...Get used to it...A rising tide will lift all the ships, and when it recedes, they will go back down.  Like many of the cycles of life, this should not be a surprise.

In conclusion, I now work with Developers Capital Realty, LLC., as a buyers agent for institutional investors looking for below market bargins in real estate. If you are aware of a bargin where a builder or developer needs to get out of a project, and close quickly for cash, please give me a call.