Quote from Landis82:
Thanks.
I did not know.
As you may have suspected, things were milk and honey from 1998 to approximately 2006, when the bottom fell out.
2007 and 2008 were horrible years, which gave me a lot of free time and time to reflect on whether there's a future that resembles what was an admittedly great time to make money in real estate development (especially the commercial side).
The longer we get this deflationary pressure and credit crisis, and the more unemployment spikes, the more pressure we're seeing in on the residential and commercial side, the less confident I am becoming that there will be anything even remotely resembling a V shaped recovery, and that begs the question of whether we're going to be stuck in a 5 year, 10 year or maybe even longer rut on the development side. Office is dead completely.
When I attended ICSC in Vegas, there was literally 30% the head count of attendees as there were in 2005, and the major retailer booths had reps who admitted they were there just to stage a presence, basically.
There were a few exceptions, such as some of the deep discounters (Steinmart, Costco), but the regulars like Best Buy and Home Depot were not real interested in talking shop.
I took a long drive from Henderson all the way to Lake Havasu, and noticed that the same KB Home and Del Webb projects I had seen two years earlier were dead, with units selling for as little as 30% of peak prices.
And then I came across an industry article that stated Pulte walked away from a 500 million dollar deposit on (I think) 1200 acres of land they had bid and won on from the bureau of land management.
I am a low profile person, and do not care for ostentatious types, but will tolerate them if they have other redeeming qualities. Some of the people I've known or my family has known fit into this category, and they had individual net worth of anywhere from 30 to 100 million dollars (maybe slightly more, rough estimates) at one time (2004 to 2006, mainly), and are now bankrupt. One of these individuals was developing over 2000 lots per year and building well in excess of 600 homes per year, in addition to building commercial projects, when times were good.
Although not a friend of mine, one individual I had the opportunity to look at a major project with in Utah had a checking account that had over 100 million dollars in it - I saw it with my own eyes, and yes, he was bragging. He is not broke exactly, but common sense dictates that he took a major hit to his net wealth as asset values have declined.
None of what I just stated is exaggerated in any way, shape or form.