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What are they thinking of??

July 26th, 2008 at 04:37 pm

We have lots of builders in our area, and some of them are sitting on a half dozen homes, spec homes that is. Now my husband loves to build a spec house cause he can build it the way he want to, but right now he is doing custom homes.
I can see building one spec house and it has not sold, but why build another one before you get the first house sold? I guess it was just too easy to borrow that money from the bank.
However, the way we build is to use our OWN money to buy the land and built the house. So, we build one house and we don't start another until it is sold.
So we have NO houses sitting and no financial problems at this time.

As for the challenge, the braves won yesterday and the stock market went up, so that is $2 for the challenge!

Prev. total $18,866.00
today 2.00
new total $18,868.00

Posted in $20 Challenge | 6 Comments »

6 Responses to “What are they thinking of??”

  1. Broken Arrow Says:
    July 26th, 2008 at 07:27 pm 1217100454
    1217100454

    Ima, though I'm not a builder, I know some people in my area who are.

    And I think you bring up a point so important that I wish other builders to take it to heart.

    A friend's father has two spec homes sitting right now, and have no takers. Why did he go ahead and build the second one? I have no idea. Truly baffling. Not only that, but he did it with bank loans too.

    Yeah, a lot of builders are getting hurt right now due to the housing market, but looking back, I do think there are some things builders could have done to minimize the damage....

  2. Ima saver Says:
    July 26th, 2008 at 09:19 pm 1217107189
    1217107189

    I agree boken arrow. They were making a big profit on the houses for a while and they just got too greedy! Now all these homes are sitting and the builder's are having to pay out a lot of interest each month.

  3. baselle Says:
    July 26th, 2008 at 09:40 pm 1217108424
    1217108424

    They build for exactly that reason - the builder got the bank loan for it, and its probably bonded. If the builder doesn't build, said builder has to return the money back to the bank. And then they're really dead.

  4. Joan.of.the.Arch Says:
    July 27th, 2008 at 12:49 am 1217119790
    1217119790

    In my neighborhood there are four small "infill" developments going up, yet buying appears to have come to a near standstill. Why is someone building more townhouses when the other spec ones have been up for 8 months to a year with no buyers? I see one developer who already did the tear-downs of existing houses in order to put up townhouses appears to have come to a standstill---complete with leaving the old basement of one house unfilled and unfenced. You just can't safely do that in an urban neighborhood....Somebody's kid----well you know. The wildflowers there have been lovely though. Nature returns wherever the chance arises.

  5. Amber Says:
    July 27th, 2008 at 04:52 am 1217134372
    1217134372

    I agree with the other posters, this is one of the reasons for this huge housing mess

  6. spechousewife Says:
    July 28th, 2008 at 02:39 am 1217212764
    1217212764

    There is another side to this story. I have saved all my life and should be very comfortable. My husband is a builder and we were not "greedy". He loves to build and when approached incessantly by realtors to buy land and build beautiful homes he did this without my ok. The bankers were willing to give out loans on a handshake practically. No one even the bankers knew what was going to happen. For the record, we NEVER made big profits. We did pay our workers well and now they cannot find jobs. We are sitting on homes, have lost all our life savings and I am thinking suicide nearly every day. The government is not going to bail us out. Have some compassion. The next suicide might be someone you know.

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