Did a lot of boating this weekend and there seemed to be a lot of boats still under “wraps.” So today I saw an interesting article in The Real Deal/Miami (hat tip to WSJ Developments Blog) Foreclosures could put houses in plastic

>Foreclosures, dried-up financing and simple bad timing means countless South Florida construction projects now sit unfinished and all but abandoned. In the subtropical climate, the wood develops mold and degrades and the metal rusts.

>…the company has wrapped three homes in the past several months, and is working with a group in Pennsylvania to begin wrapping 240 homes in the Northeast.

It’s a growing problem – not sure this is the answer but perhaps it beats the alternative.


3 Comments

  1. Edd Gillespie July 7, 2009 at 1:31 pm

    Frankly the wrecking ball seems a far more realistic to me than the alternative of shrink wrap-or-rot.
    Shrink wrapping must be based on the assumption that the demand for this ill-advised new construction will re-generate once some fantasy is subscribed to en-mass(the NAR approach). The fact that the houses are there and vacant at all is testament to there never having been sustainable demand in the first place. Whether it be demand for houses or consumer confidence, either requires $$. This is still about the effect on domestic joblessness, by Wal-mart, outsourcing and the likes of NAFTA. These and other “free-market decisions” (my quote since trade and employment decisions are made in the spirit cooperation between the federal government and corporate interests over many objections from concerned but uninvited more ordinary folk) are coming home to roost on Main Street, right here in River City, period. Our individual standard of living is changing to something less than it was. When we find out what it is going to be then those houses can be put on the market at their value. That scenario assumes the banks are willing pay the taxes long enough, which of course the one that went the wrecking ball route was not. Given what we know and not what we hope, the wrecking ball makes sense. The houses were a mistake. It is hard to judge the merit of the proposed solutions to a problem that never made any sense to begin with.
    Let’s judge them with the answer to this question. Which solution better protects the environment long term? Shiny plastic or carbon dioxide from the wrecking ball and land fill? But then the plastic will eventually be in the land fill too or can some of this stuff be recycled? Maybe it is a wash.

  2. loan modification July 7, 2009 at 2:39 pm

    Extending term of the loan can allow for those late fees to be re-applied into the mortgage. This saves you the thousands of dollars the lender wants to ‘catch you up’ on your loan.

  3. Edd Gillespie July 7, 2009 at 5:41 pm

    loan modification,

    Have you any actual examples, let alone a significant number of them, that support your conclusions that 1. Banks want you to catch up, or 2. That anyone can catch up, especially if new charges are added to an already under-water loan?

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