The Punch Bowl Was Left Out Too Long In Florida

[Crewleader]

August 5th, 2008

The Pensacola News Journal reports from Florida. “Like the Pensacola Bay Area housing market itself, Randy Phillips and his wife Heather Hood have found themselves with too many homes and not enough buyers. They have a house in North Hill they can’t sell, a mortgage to pay on their home in East Hill, and another mortgage on their former home in Orange Beach, Ala.”

“‘We hate to do it, but we’re now thinking about putting the house in East Hill on the market,’ Randy Phillips said. ‘But, quite honestly, I don’t have the confidence we can sell it for anything close to what we have in it. We’re really caught.’”

“They purchased their North Hill home in 2004, just before Hurricane Ivan hit. ‘The storm took the roof off, and we never spent a night in it,’ Phillips said.”

“But they did spend a year and $50,000 repairing it, only to decide it was too small for them. They then bought their current home in East Hill, and in mid-2006 put their North Hill home on the market for $259,000, thinking it would sell quickly.”

“‘As soon as we bought the house in East Hill, the market turned,’ Phillips said.”

http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=4823

[Warpy]

1. The market had already turned in the fall of 2005

and I'm astonished that so many people missed it.

All it took was counting the "for sale" signs.

It tanked officially in April, 2006, which is when I read about it in the Sun Sentinel online.

I feel sorry for these folks, but honestly, people who trust experts who have a contrary agenda (they want to sell houses!) instead of trusting their eyes will always get shafted.

Either they will have to take a massive loss and live in the cheapest place and hope they can keep it, or they'll have to find people to rent their extra houses.