Home building keeps slowingAnd here:
The Builders Association of the Twin Cities said Monday that home builders were issued 455 permits to build 871 units in October, a 47 percent decline in permits and a 44 percent decline in units from October 2005.
Curt Swanson, association president, attributed the permit decline partly to noncommittal deal hunters and said that "trying to time the market is near impossible."
Sales peaked in 2003 when 11,472 permits were issued to build 19,000 new units at a time when mortgage interest rates were slipping to the lowest point in a generation. That buying spree borrowed from future demand and drove home prices to record levels. Now, activity is at its slowest pace since the early 1990s.
Too many agents, too few buyers
Even as home sales have slid, the number of licensed agents and brokers has jumped 8.8 percent statewide between January 2005 and September 2006 to 40,930, according to the Minnesota Department of Commerce.
It's getting so crowded that hints to less-productive members are no longer subtle. In his association's fall member resource update, [Chris Galler, senior vice president of the Minnesota Association of Realtors] asks: "Is it time for a career adjustment?"
Meanwhile, new home construction has fallen to levels not seen since the early 1990s.
So, will the shared -wall end of the market tank further, or is it at a trough ready to rebound? How badly will a local glut affect those needing to sell and wanting to recover their built-up equity? Will we be both on the hook taxwise in the future, and on the hook if we have to sell into a slack market?
With these worries, why let City government now raise the debt ceiling for more activity at Town Center while the jury's still out and funds may already have been spent unwisely?
How much of a continued housing shake-out is yet to come?
And why did the planners and council members not anticipate and plan for downside Town Center risks?
They dismissed it as "negative thinking" and plunged headlong -- with your future tax dollars at risk whenever municipal debt is incurred.
"The new rooftops will pay for themselves" was an opinion hardly universally held.
It was saying, "Don't worry, be happy," with your tax dollars and not their money.
Land speculators were out for the quick kill, witness the Kurak activity from the council table on Town Center, and the Elvig activity to get sewer-water to the gun club where his father-in-law held a stake even before Elvig took office.
A truth about new rooftops and new taxpayers -- they, like us, would want something for their money. They, like us, would not want to pay something for nothing. That was the flaw in that "rooftops, rooftops, rooftops" theme.
The land speculators take their money up-front and the taxpayers service and retire debt.
VOTE SMART. Last night without benefit of the timely Strib items, I posted on downside risk, and I posted earlier on how it is not "child's play" to sell less-desirable housing in a glut market.
And finally in voting, ask yourself why YOU moved to Ramsey - and whether the planners and council are taking us away from the neighborhood charm and attraction that brought you here.