Miami Condo Glut Pushes Florida's Economy to Brink of Recession

[Herman Munster]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a4qa.rYTWyYA&refer=news

July 20 (Bloomberg) -- In the middle of the biggest glut of condominiums in more than 30 years, Miami developers keep on building.

The oversupply will force prices down as much as 30 percent, the worst decline since the 1970s, and help push Florida's economy into recession as early as October, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at West Chester, Pennsylvania-based Moody's Economy.com, who owns a home in Vero Beach, Florida.

``Florida is the epicenter for all the problems that exist in the housing industry,'' said Lewis Goodkin, president of Goodkin Consulting Corp. and a property adviser in Miami for the past 30 years, who also foresees a recession. ``The problems we have now are unprecedented and a lot of people will get burnt.''

Thirty-seven new high-rise condos and 20,000 new units are being built in Miami's 1,040-acre downtown, where sales fell almost 50 percent in May, according to the Florida Association of Realtors. The new units will join the 22,924 existing condos in Miami-Dade County that were for sale in April, according to Jack McCabe, chief executive officer of McCabe Research & Consulting LLC in Deerfield Beach, Florida. That's the most unsold units since McCabe began tracking sales in 2002.

[Captain Angry]

1. I keep begging my parents to wait to buy.

They have gotten tired of the cold winters, and are thinking of getting a small place in Florida for a few of the harsh winter months.

I'll be sending this article along to them along with the other pleading I will continue to do. :-)

[Skink]

2. I guess the 90's was a bad time to live there.

O8)

[RavensChick]

3. It's happening all over

especially in Washington, DC (where I used to live). It's just a matter of time before every major city in America pushes out the low income residents to satisfy the greed of high income residents. That will increase the homeless population and all the evils out in the world now will get 100 times worse than ever before. I may visit Miami but I sure as hell won't live there.