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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

>  >Buy land while you have urban income to  
> >pay for it. Don't be one of the many who in ten or twenty years will  
> >be saying, "why, I could have bought that land for a pittance of what  
> >it sold for yesterday." Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Live in the present  
> >but plan for the future. I know these things.
> 

Can't say that that observation has a good track record.  In '03 and '04 
there was a similar hue and cry about suburban and urban real estate.  Buy 
now, 
the rate houses are going up you will not be able to afford one in a few 
years, 
real estate only gose up, up, up!  After all, they ain't making any more land!

Is it time now to tactfully point out that there WAS indeed a real estate 
bubble, it burst, and sales and prices are all toilet bound?  It wasn't local 
and 
it is identifed as the main cause of the looming deep recession.

Many a person who was carried along with the 'it will only go up, up, up!' 
mantra in '04 and '05 are hoeplesly screwed to the wall now.

Only three or four years ago everyone was so sure real estate prices would 
continue to climb they "invested" or borrowed against every tiny scrap of 
vacant 
land here abouts.  Now the for sale signs have sprouted like mushrooms and 
they stay up month after month.

As to the baby boomers descending on rural areas, buying up all the land, and 
driving prices up .... maybe.  Not likely.  First that depends on an 
uninterrupted supply of motor fuel and other commodities needed by the 
non-self-sufficient in rural areas which is far, far from certain.  Also at 
the time I'm 
typing this the DOW stock averages are 20% below what they were at their peak 
last 
October.  This is a LOT of the money those boomers were going to use to buy 
up the real estate.  

Just this morning there was an analysis of stock holdings saying that if a 
significant number of boomer cashed out in order to do just as Gene suggests, 
it 
would weaken the stock so much the value would plummet further and put an end 
to such goings on.  

Many of these boomers foolishly put all their assets into a much larger and 
more expensive house than they needed or wanted under the understanding that 
the value of real estate only goes up, up, up!  They planned on selling the 
appreciated house for enough money to buy a smaller place in the country and 
living off the difference.  Now they are finding that they can't give the 
houses 
away and that the aftermath of the burst real estate bubble might last ten to 
twenty years or longer.

Also there's this, all those 'jobs' working from home are largely air jobs.  
They don't really do anything and produce nothing in the way of tangible 
goods 
for the folk.  They are the last remnant of imaginary 'jobs' made possible by 
the oil economy and the controlling influence of the soon to be exticnt 
petro-dollar.

And I didn't come to these conclusions by listening to talking heads and 
reading rant-blogs.  Numbers.  That's how I and anyone else with half a brain 
and 
a calculator knew the bursting of the housing bubble was on the way.  
Numbers. 
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