Amoeba Causes Building Permits to drop!

[Not So Fast]

The optimists are always looking thru rose colored glasses. How many threads have there been from folks in the realtor type businesses that for the past year have been saying "everything is fine, just a little lull, things are moving"??? Right, the bottom is yet to come IMO. Guess I'd say the same if I was dying on the vine also NSF

[maxwedge]

Trust me $8000 per building is a lot of money for residential construction, and building will likely pretty much cease. At least it would around here. There just isn't that much margin to be had. The company I used to work for was building condo's in a small town near here. In fact builders from everywhere where buying up cheap lots and contruction was through the roof for a couple of years, until the town decided they were going to pay for their new water treatment plant by adding a $4000 fee to every new home permit, instead of spreading it around on everybodys property tax or something. Before that the total of all fees was about $400 per home, so it was a huge increase. It pretty well killed us. That adds up to several hundred thousand in unexpected costs if you are doing even a small condo development, and it basically ate up any and all profits they might of had. Half of those lots are now sitting empty as are lots all around the city. Now there are developments going up just outside the city limits instead.
Also it's pretty common, around here anyway, that roads, water and sewer lines are paid for and put in by the developer and then given to the city, which means that they are basically part of the developers cost anyway. The city is resposible for maintaing them after the fact, but that is theoretically paid for with new property tax.