Economic Revival Afoot For 2012?

Willis (Sears)
and Trump Towers

Chicago!  City "where the fog comes on little cat feet..."  "Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; Stormy, Husky, Brawling, City of the Big Shoulders!"  Maybe I wouldn't have admitted it back then, but when I was a kid, I had a "favorite poet," and it was Carl Sandburg... and he nailed Chicago with his rugged, yet beautiful prose.


Today, I'm here to enjoy New Years with family and to take them all to a local hill for their first taste of skiing.  Come on, Chicago, we're here from Florida...  Give us some big time "lake effect" snow!  

Skating at Millennium Park

So I pick up the Chicago Journal yesterday and a business page header reads:  "Real Estate Revival Revs Up!"  New condos being built and older condos and apartments being re-furbished into new, modern condos!  Music to my ears!  From a Supply & Demand perspective, that is a huge indicator that the bottom has been found.  A bit of a contrast to my experience in Palm Coast, Flagler Beach, and Flagler County, FL, where last month I sold a gorgeous Yacht Harbor Village condo on the Intracoastal Waterway, on a bank short sale, for $145,000 to a cash investor.  Oh, did I mention that the seller, a mortgage banker friend of mine from Virginia, paid $640,000 for it in 2007?  And then there was the Ocean Hammock - Hammock Beach lot I also sold last month for $65,000... that the seller paid $510,000 for in 2005.  Ouch!  However, and it's really a BIG however... There is movement...  Things are selling...  Investors are back!


As I read the papers and the blogs here... and watch the business & financial news on local TV, I'm psyched to see lots of signs of revival and strong economic development efforts.  Why?  because when large, Northern, urban regions start to rev up... it begins the spill-over to smaller markets.  Also, if we compare the 4Q2010 to the 4Q2011 in Flagler County, FL, our real estate sales numbers were up nearly 30% and prices were down nearly 10%.  Again, the view from Econ 101, says this is good stuff... very good stuff!