On February 10th, President Obama hopped aboard Air Force One and made a stop in SW Florida. The purpose of his trip was to sell his stimulus package, to the folks of the hard hit Florida real estate market. But as Linda Flack recently stated their real estate market has actually hit bottom and not doing that bad.
Then he jetted off to Denver Colorado to sign the economic stimulus bill. Why Denver? Well according to the media the President went to Denver because they are a "green" state. Plus as Jim Luz recently reported on his blog, Denver was named 1 of 12 Solar America cities.
The next day the President headed off to Mesa Arizona to sign the Housing Bailout. Meza like Florida is experiencing huge amounts of foreclosures and falling values. Hey what better place to sign the bill.
Hey President Obama what about Detroit, Michigan???
Remember us? Back in the early 1900's we put tons of people to work building automobiles. We are also the state that shifted all our plants during the wars from automotive to tanks to help out the country. Loads of people black and white came here to work. Our state was the true melting pot of America. Everyone came here to work immigrating from all over the world. You may know us better as "The Motor City Capital of the World" people usually refer to GM, Ford and Chrysler as the Big Three. We were once a thriving manufacturing state.
In case you forgot we are having some financial problems here. Remember back in December when the auto execs came to Washington and were told to come back when they had a better plan? I'm sure you remember when you and many lawmakers chastised the auto execs for using their private company planes when they came to Washington? BTW the United States of America is having some HUGE financial problems too, so perhaps you should park Air Force One and just sign the bills in Washington. Besides saving the tax payers some money it would be the "green" thing to do.
I don't mean to be disrespectful President Obama but Michigan unlike Mesa and Fort Myers is hurting pretty bad in terms of employment and housing. So why not stop here in Michigan? Oh yea just in case your staff forgot to tell you Michigan's unemployment numbers look pretty bad compared to FL, CO and AZ, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Now you may not know this but Michigan unlike the other states did not have all kinds of second homes being bought and sold for profit or speculators buying up pre-construction developments, doubling their prices. Nope we simply had middle America moving their families. Those same people that work in and around the automotive field.
As you can see from the chart below our sales prices did not double in 2003 or 2004 like Florida and Arizona. But they did come down quite a bit. From what I have read Mesa like Fort Myers is back to 2003 prices. So the way I figure less people were effected than here where bank foreclosures have put us back to 1997 - 1998 prices. Check out my Tale of 2 Condos to see what I mean.
Well that's all for now I just thought I should share with you and the rest of the country what's been happening here in Mitten state since you did not stop by.
