So, I guess officially we're in a recession. It'll be interesting to see when this second recession of the wonderful Bush years actually started (they usually define the timeframe on these things in the rearview mirror) but I think some of the cause and effect lies in the mere fact that if you say something often enough it eventually comes to fruition. Hell, I wonder if the powers that be aren't actually happy the attention has been diverted from other things, ahem, can you spell Iraq, with all the bad news about the economy. My wife said two malls she visited today were very busy and I can say that starting last week real estate open houses were briskly visited. But irresponsible corporate giants like Home Depot just seem to enjoy fueling the fire by laying people off at the perfect time when they could demonstrate a modicum of responsibility and bite the bullet rather than adding fuel to the fire. But of course business today isn't about responsibility, it's about making Wall Street happy. You know what, the LAST thing businesses should do in bad times is cut back. But, alas, they always do. A few years back, during the 2001- 03 recession, Intel co-founder Andy Grove gave a talk at an annual Intel partner conference I attended and made a point of lecturing us on down times being the best time to invest in our companies and expand.... About a month later Intel layed off ~10,000 people....
We're about to put our Wilmington flip project on the market, hopefully within the next two weeks, and of course I'm concerned about the market, especially an inner city market. The inner cities are where economic slowdowns are most noticeable and we can only hope that someone wanting a nice house in the city won't be paralyzed by all the nonsense bouncing around. Worse, we have to hope that an interested buyer there can get a mortgage as things have tightened up considerably by another segment of the irresponsible corporate brotherhood. Of all times to squeeze things on credit, while the bailouts pile up and cash is made as available as Tums to these people (the banks, mortgage companies, etc.)....
Yes, it's a good time to buy, whether for your primary residence or for investments. Whether it will remain a decent time to sell nice properties, only time will tell as we get closer to peek selling season over the next 4-8 weeks.
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