<p>Just curious, what are you all seeing out there, as we approach the start of 2012?
Any statistics jump out at you? Any anecdotes?</p>
<p>Neither, particularly. The markets are too volatile to depend on. The economy is adding jobs slowly, if at all. I think it’s been just plain flat for a very long time, and it’s likely to stay that way.</p>
<p>Unless the weaker economies in Europe destroy the Euro. If that happens, I’m going to start stockpiling canned food. And ammunition.</p>
<p>We were in the Ft Lauderdale area a month ago and went to dinner at a restaurant off the beach at Miami Beach, went to a large mall - Sawgrass something, and also to a restaurant at an outdoor mall. Based on the traffic on the roads and lack of parking anywhere close by, these people don’t seem to know what an economic downturn is. </p>
<p>High spot of the trip was Flamingo Garden which was a sanctuary for wild and captive birds and animals, where they were nurturing injured creatures like a blinded Opossum.</p>
<p>Anecdotes… In 2008/2009, the CCers were busy discussing best ways of stretching their $, such as how to squeeze the last few microliters of toothpaste out of the tube… In 2011, we still talk about finding good deals, but these are threads about foreign travel, new dishwashers, kitchen remodel…</p>
<p>better … but I’d write that in font size 1 if I could</p>
<p>Better. In my area, new restaurants have been opening and thriving, vacancy rates are down, rents are up, Whole Foods, Costco and Best Buy are packed. The outlet stores are busy and hiring. It’s a slow upturn, and we’re hoping that in continues.</p>
<p>Better. I’ve been busier this year than ever. Local restaurants seem to be doing well. I worry about Europe imploding and what the repercussions there might be however.</p>
<p>Of course if they cut the Federal budget any more my husband may never get another grant - and could lose his job despite having tenure. Hope nobody cares that it will be one fewer person studying brain and breast cancer.</p>
<p>Interesting. I, too, have been surprised at how busy and crowded stores, restaurants and malls are, flights (yes, they are managed, but. still…) booked, tickets sold out, and so forth.
Yet, the local Food Bank and soup kitchens are begging for more food, as the needs are way up still.</p>
<p>College apps are up. Early apps are up.</p>
<p>However, on Zillow, the price of our house has plummeted by 50% in the last month, so now it is down about 80% from the peak, not much higher than where we purchased it 14 years ago, pre-renovation costs—YIKES!!!</p>
<p>We have many more homeless people, double the number of people using the foodbank, 30% more people on Medicaid, the Free Clinic is jammed, and many, many more people addicted to heroin and other opiates. All growing. Many folks exhausting 99 weeks of unemployment. Free lunches in schools way up. </p>
<p>On the other hand, while the value of their homes has declined, the top 20% is doing just fine - eating out, buying appliances, etc.</p>
<p>I expect it is simply a matter of where you sit on the curve, and who you see.</p>
<p>performersmom, Zillow’s numbers aren’t reliable at all - I always take those with a bucketful of salt. They don’t know the fine points of your local real estate market, so their estimates are often way off. Your house is probably worth more than they’re saying!</p>
<p>I hear you performersmom; We’ve been here 20 years, and at the rate it’s been going this year, our house will be worth the same or less than what we bought it for within the next year. and we’ve done a ton of renovations.</p>
<p>Booklady, yes, I am aware of that. The weird thing is that our house price is seriously plummeting, incl $ per sq ft, but the surrounding area is not. I have tried to reach Zillow to ask what is happening, but not really possible.
But this is a separate conversation about Zillow- should I start a new thread about problem with Zillow?</p>
<p>Mini,
I guess I never thought that the top 10% or 20% could so easily swamp stores and malls, and fill hotels/resorts… Has our the overall population grown that much? Anyway, anecdotes and personal experiences are unreliable, but this is apparently a common phenomenon.</p>
<p>concur with mini. Our food bank and rent assistance programs are overwhelmed with clients. We have had three local restaurants close recently. seeing more families living on the edge, check to check. Lots of self employed people in our community are struggling. I’ve seen two realtors lose their own homes to foreclosure. I know several contractors who are on the verge of losing their homes.</p>
<p>I don’t commute, but when I make the mistake of venturing out during rush hour, I am always amazed at the nonmoving traffic. The official unemployment rate around here is over 10%. If the rate dropped to 5% I don’t think anyone would be able to get to work. They would be stuck in traffic all day.</p>
<p>The economy is about to get much worse. Within 4 months, it will be determined that we are in a new recession.</p>
<p>Unemployment in NH was 5.4% for September and 7.3% for MA. Not that bad compared to the rest of the country though NH’s normal rate was usually around 2-3%. Restaurants, malls, etc. have been pretty busy lately and we have a couple of manufacturing companies moving into town providing several hundred jobs each. We have a new premium outlets mall opening in June - it’s supposed to be the biggest such mall in New England. I spoke to the Cable guy recently and he’s very busy doing installations (he was a few hours late to install our internet service). So those are some signs of better.</p>
<p>But I also read of stories of people struggling in the newspaper, of crazy property crime to get a few bucks, of sharp cutbacks in social services to balance the state budget. So my feeling is that some people are doing well and some aren’t. We have a lot of defense companies in the area and I would guess that those folks should start worrying in 2013 if the automatic federal defense cuts kick in.</p>
<p>A lot of local merchants are still hurting - local pizza shops and very small businesses.</p>
<p>We had a lot of things that needed to get repaired this year - I called a plumber for a few repairs and there are a few other repairs that I’m delaying until I get a better handle on whether or not I can do it myself. I’ve also made a bunch of other repairs that I was a bit afraid to do but they worked out just fine. I suspect that there is a huge amount of pent-up deferred maintenance but that people will look for the cheapest way to get it fixed.</p>
<p>worse…and going to get worse.</p>
<p>I think it is perspective and regional. In Atlanta, for the first time in many months, unemployment slipped below 10 percent to 9.9 percent, but there is virtually no construction going on and things just feel slow. I will say that stores and restaurants seem busy, but I also think that the smart landlords are cutting rents – which was highlighted in a recent article about big box stores expanding nationally.</p>
<p>We just returned from Texas, where things feel much healthier, there is construction of commercial properties going on and I don’t think that their housing has been as negatively impacted as most of the rest of the country.</p>
<p>Better and worse. </p>
<p>Better because the number of jobs in my area has definitely been going up. The amount of jobs I see advertising this year versus last year is significantly larger. Also, people seem to be buying more (I work at a photography company for youth sports and people spent significantly more this year than last, and that isn’t something that people spend money on lightly). </p>
<p>With that said, I have also seen a huge surge in need in the community. I work at a DV shelter and we get homeless calls all the time. The calls have gone way up and our donations are way down. That can be explained by the fact that food prices have gone way up, fuel has gone way up, etc so even if people are getting new jobs, it might not be enough to make ends meet. Furthermore, a lot of people in Michigan just got kicked off of assistance programs in the last few months causing the need to go up.</p>
<p>The state below mini’s has the most per capita on foodstamps</p>