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What you can do about it? Well for starters, look at history. The last time we had a Real Estate Crash in Florida it was about 1920. Well it took over 10 years to clear the dust. The same thing happened in Japan several years ago and it took over 12 years to recover. The current Bubble burst in the Summer of 2006. So we are not going to see the bottom until late 2009.

So what does that mean? If you own a home and want to sell it, you have to offer it for a lower price than the competition. I am in the same boat. I bought a house in Homestead Florida Pre-construction and I closed in the Summer of 2006. What a big mistake.

I would have been much better off walking away that day. They would have kept my 30,000 deposit which I lost anyway. Well that is unless I am willing to keep this house for at least another 6 or 7 years! And then I payed over 20,000 closing costs and now the property went down even further and I will have to short sell it for $30,000 less than I owe the bank. So if you are interested in paying $250 K for a house that cost me over $325 K, you can have it. The builder won and I admit it.

The same thing goes for you if you are about to close on any type of Pre-construction property, house, condo etc. Go to another Realtor and pretend that you want to buy the exact same type of unit. If you can find one for a price that is less than your price that your contract says. Well that forget about your deposit. It is lost, unless you have 6 or 7 years time to wait for the Real Estate Market to pick up again. I mean some Miracles do happen, but don’t let that builder or Realtor leave you to believe that the Market will be back on track next year.

I say no way my friend. It just aint happening anytime soon. Not until 2010 or so. 

If you are planning to buy a home, townhouse, condo etc. Make sure you find out who and what kind of homeowner association you may be about to fall under. I have dealt with 3 so far in south Florida, via my own ownership. I have also been affected my several others while managing my own local moving company.

There are some association that have some rules that either came straight from Hell or perhaps Russia, Cuba or any other communist nations. They have rule about when a person can move in or out. How much furniture that they can have and yes, even rules about what type of sex, gender, color, age etc that a owner can be or who is allowed to rent from you.

And yes somehow they are hidden behind a bunch of lawyers who created rules that are 95 percent in favor of the association and 5 percent on the side of the owner.

I have found places in Miami Beach that do not let a person move in or out unless they pay $250 elevator fee.

Another place would not let me deliver a single mattress, because it was 5 minutes past 5:00 PM. I had to tie it to the customers car until the following morning.

I have found places where you can only move 1 day of the week.

Where I live now if you park your car wrong you will get towed in less than 10 minutes.

There are so many examples. Please feel free to share any crazy encounters that you have with an Association.

This is Legal communism in America.