How is the job market for you?

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   ehern33posted 14 years ago

   I live in the Florida Panhandle and being in a small town, it seems people are moving out for one reason or another. Houses are up for sale all over and taking a long time to sell.
   
   If anyone lives in or around this area would you please let me know what you have seen or heard? I would like to get a better feel for the struggles being encountered in my area.

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2. 68

   lrohnerposted 14 years ago

   I don't live in the area, but know the Florida housing market well. It sucks. I'm not at all surprised though. I used to work in Miami, so kept up with the trends and demographics of Florida. It used to be that every blue hair on the East Coast retired and moved to Florida. That started to change about 10 years ago. Folks started to retire to the Carolinas or out west to Arizona or New Mexico or Texas.
   
   Couple that growing trend with a down housing market, and it spells disaster. As a matter of fact, in 2008 for the first time in a gazillion years, combined domestic and international migration to Florida was actually down!
   
   I'm just glad I got out when I did. But seriously, it was the chads that did me in!

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   ehern33posted 14 years ago

   I am orginally from Miami and moved out of there a few years ago. You are pretty much on the money. It is a totally different market there, such a melting pot of cultures that it gets confusing sometimes. When the real estate market was booming I remember telling everyone this is not going to last, banks were giving money out left and right and it didn't take much common sense to see what was coming down the pike. So I sold my homes and got out of Dodge.. I grew up there and have visited a few times since I left, and every time I just see it so differently that I can't spend more than a few days there.

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   ledefensetechposted 14 years ago

   Very smart.  It's interesting to note that Florida has been losing population for the first time since the end of World War II.  What we're seeing is the meltdown of the entire economic system.  Nobody seems quite sure what's going to take it's place, but what you can count on is that it won't be one in which 70% of the economy is consumer based.

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      lrohnerposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Hey, I like your new avatar!

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      1. 59

         ehern33posted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Hey thanks, appreciate it. Didn't want to paste a picture of me and have my hub score plummet to the floor! )

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      ehern33posted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I hear you. It is just insane to live down there. I still have family there and I get constant complaints and regrets that they ahve not moved out yet. I in-laws did decide to move up here about a year ago and so far they don't regret it.I also have a friend that was in the real-estate business and made a killing during the boom, now he had to start another sales job because it was just to hard. He was more into commercial real-estate. He told me that cetain areas look deserted as businesses closed down.

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         ledefensetechposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Ah, you have to love the effects of a burst bubble, we'll be living with the consequences of that for years, if not decades.  Still when things begin to recover, that might be the place to be.  Deflation will make it affordable to live there and the weather is beautiful.  I don't expect that to happen for years yet though.
         
         @Irohner, Thanks, that was taken at my old hometown last year.  I still miss that place.

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