Higher-end communities like The Cliffs might benefit by some offshore marketing
The current U.S. housing market doldrums are like an ocean liner chugging ahead at full steam. They can try whatever they want, but the residential construction industry will not turn it around quickly.
Even the economists who wear the rosiest-colored glasses, like those who toil without shame for the National Association of Realtors, see no change for the better until mid 2008 or later. If they think 2008, then tack on at least a year for the Pollyanna effect always built into their predictions. Anyone trying to time the U.S. real estate market would do well to look to 2009 or even later before the turnaround. The end is not near.
In the meantime, here is some free advice for all those builders trying for ways to survive: Start a marketing blitz overseas. Free market capitalism has spread globally, with more than 3 billion people in China, India, Russia and other former socialist (and communist) countries now emerging into some form of capitalism. One result is the rapid emergence of a new class of nouveau riche. New wealth typically has a need to show off its gains with conspicuous spending on baubles, bangles, international travel and real estate.
Conspicuous spending on real estate certainly is evident in New York City, for example, where real estate prices continue to run counter to the national trends. Russian oil weaIth and the rapidly emerging industrial rich in India are fueling the market in the Big Apple. Like Manifest Destiny, and encouraged further by the devalued dollar, new foreign wealth could spread west and south seeking new solid assets.
It is time for domestic builders to enlist the services of some creative marketing agencies and start pitching their wares beyond the U.S.'s choppy shores. And perhaps for higher-end residential communities to start hanging signs that say "Russian spoken here."
