First all, there is not just a US housing bubble that is ‘deflating’, there is also a world real estate bubble. It is well burst by now in Japan, and the bust of Japan’s over inflated housing market was one of the prime causes of the crash of that economy more than a decade ago. Japan still has not yet recovered.
Before the market burst in Japan, Americans were scared that they were being economically bypassed by Japan. Then as the US bubble fully inflated there has been American euphoria that our economy appeared so strong. Today there is mainly fear about the US economic future. Things look grim.
Though Colorado is not yet considered one of the US real estate’s metro ‘dead zones’ like Boston, Miami, San Diego, etc., we can see how the bubble has sprouted across the Colorado landscape. Everywhere, there is new ugly housing that has just recently been built on the outskirts of the major Colorado metropolitan areas. Easy come, easy go.
I think of these areas as instant slums. There are few trees, no community, and long commutes amongst and across this plasticized landscape. Meanwhile, there are FOR RENT signs in the older neighborhoods, as people foolishly went rushing off to buy that new, but inferior, housing in the slurbs..
They often bought it with money they just are not going to have, but thought that their ‘investment’ had to just go up, up, up! It doesn’t, and if people begin to lose their jobs they will soon go bankrupt and be unable to pay the mortgage. So much for ‘investment’…
Imagine a near future where many of these shoddy housing areas will be full of vacated properties. Houses that were poorly built in the first place, will begin to fall into quick disrepair. Pop goes the US housing bubble and pop shall go Colorado’s development bubble, too. This is a poor way to plan (if it can be called planning?) communities. Speculation (haste) makes waste, and the landscape will look even more bare than it does now while the development is still fairly new.
Even worse, the housing bubble was built on cheap gasoline and ample supply. That just is not going to be the case, and the US government effort to rob and control the remaining world supplies of underground petrol by military force, are just adding to the economic chaos we will have to soon endure.
