I have been caught up in several busts in my years here that severely impacted my finances.
Locally, since covid hit, we have been riding a major boom (I'll skip details on the reasons). I now definitely smell a bust in the air. Real estate prices are still unrealistically high. Sellers are still trying to sell into a 2.5% interest rate market. Now at 7%, payments on that high priced real estate are untenable. We rapidly went from not seeing for sale signs anywhere, because you could sell damn near anything, at any price within days of listing. Now there are signs everywhere while sales have collapsed. A nearby larger city has been undergoing a massive commercial and housing building boom with rent and sale prices at absurd levels. I see the same thing there now with for rent and sale signs on much of the new floor space everywhere. The place is grossly overbuilt. That is a clear sign of pending crash. The whole shit show shows signs of the Dot-com crash, the 2007 housing bust and the Great Recession. IMHO we are absolutely on the edge of a crash.
The other side of the coin is that I see Now Hiring signs everywhere as well. Businesses are all short handed even while Dairy Queen is advertising jobs at $20 an hour and laborers at the saw mill are being hired at $22 an hour with full benefits on day one. Anyone that is even remotely capable is now working construction. My son who works in a construction service industry says that some of the construction he is seeing is exceptionally shoddy. Go figure. I also know that the county Clerk and Recorder's office has been advertising two positions since April. It's a steady government job. The wages can't compete with construction work, but the benefits are extremely generous. I mention this because in all the years I have been here I have never seen a labor market remotely like this. The implications that I see is that the local boom has caused many people to over spend on housing and toys. When the bust hits they are going to be seriously over extended and will take a very painful hit.
Good luck everyone. We are going to need it.
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