In Miami-Dade County Hurricane Andrew is Being Followed by Hurricane Foreclosure
Seventeen years ago Hurricane Andrew had hit Miami-Dade County. Today Hurricane Foreclosure is following it. The effect is the same – the flattening of the landscape.
In some special zones like Homestead and Florida City, nearly 25% of the residential houses are in foreclosure. Many others that were being built by developers sit eerie and vacant in subdivisions that look ghostly; no buyers come knocking.
Ordinary hard working people are wondering here as elsewhere in many foreclosure stricken parts of the country how they landed up in this mess?
In 2006 Jose Reina was one of the many who thought it great to buy a house in a subdivision of Homestead – The Oasis. At that time the market was just going up and up. But in 2009 Jose is sobered and wants to sell and live in rented quarters elsewhere. The amount that he is paying as mortgage would enable him to rent a mansion in some other place.
The problem with Jose, who is a police officer working in another city, is that he cannot find buyers for his house for which he had paid $352,000 and then made many costly additions and alterations. Just opposite to his residence is another house that is the split image of his own. The bank is trying to sell it for the rock bottom price of $147,000 but cannot find buyers.
Jose is resigned to the fact that it may be decades before the value of his house returns to the amount for which he bought it. He tried to work out a negotiation with the bank but talks failed. Meanwhile the increasing numbers of vacant house surrounding him are causing him worry. Soon the locality will become unsafe to reside in.
Alan Fargo clicks on his computer trying to draw similarities between the housing catastrophe in Miami-Dade County and the corridors of power in Wall Street and Washington. Fargo resides in Coral Gables – a suburb of Homestead and contributes to a popular blog – Eye on Miami. From 2006 he has been combing through public papers and made note of the bank frauds and corruption that dominated the scene just prior to the financial meltdown. The stuff he writes is depressing and this makes him wonder about its readability. But the next moment he reasons that somebody has to bare the truth.
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