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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MoneyPenny who wrote (174832)	1/2/2009 4:19:55 PM
From: Think4Yourself	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

"Michigan is just further along in decline. Rest of states will be following suit." You have that right on the money! Some states, like California, are already in worse shape budget-wise. Others, like California, Florida, Nevade, and Arizona, are fast catching up with Michigan in unemployment, bankruptcies, and other areas. It really doesn't seem to have gotten any worse here in the last few months, but when I was in Oklahoma last month it was like being in another country. "Good times will last forever" seemed to be the feeling. No one seemed to be aware that oil and gas prices, the core (and majority) of the local economy where I was, had crashed. Something odd happened while I was visiting a relative in a recently built duplex outside Oklahoma City. Fire department knocked at the door and wanted to check for Carbon Monoxide levels, which were at toxic levels in the adjacent unit. We waited outside and I noticed something about the construction of the new unit. When the guys came back out I said "our level was zero, wasn't it?". Guy said "yup, it looks like they have a cracked heat exchanger in the furnace", to which I said "Furnace is probably fine. You get a lot of CO alarms in this neighborhood, don't you?!". He says "Yeah, how did you know?". I says "Always on cold windy days, right?". He thinks for a minute and says "Yeah, now that you mention it, it is always cold and windy. How did you know?". I pointed to the roof. "These homes don't even meet the most critical internationally accepted construction codes. The furnace vent is below the nearby roof peak, an absolute no-no. You never, under no circumstances, do that because when the wind is blowing a certain way the furnace gasses will back up into the home (see Bernoullis law for why). Why don't the building inspectors enforce even the most critical building codes here?" His reply? "What building codes?"