Still Feeling It?
By Jim Palmer Jr.

 When the stock market and real estate market crashed in 2008, it plunged the U.S. economy into a recession that rivaled the one we still call the Great Depression (that I’ve heard my grandmother talk about and wear like a badge of courage).  But now we are currently in a super busy market that seems about the opposite of what it felt like in that recession, only with a distinct problematic side affect, a massive shortage of listing inventory.  Could it be that we are still feeling some of the effects of that 2008 crash?

I remember talking to spooked developers in those first few months of the 2008 recession when it felt like the market that was once an open spigot had suddenly shut off and dried up with hardly a lingering drip.  Developers, who owned whole subdivisions of undeveloped platted lots, just shut off the excavating machines and let the land sit idle.  They couldn’t afford to continue installing utilities, sidewalks or finished streets.  They were not willing to risk putting more money into an investment that seemed would have no yield for an undetermined future.

That brings us to today when developers and home builders are frantically moving that same dirt to catch up with the current demand that seems to have caught them off guard.  Contractors are now stretched to their limits and anxiously trying to hire a labor force to keep up with the demand.  But that labor force doesn’t seem to be out there.

Because of that labor shortage, much of the platted ground still sits idle, waiting until the work force can build up and catch up.  Municipalities are issuing more building permits than ever before because of the influx of outsiders to our desirable region, but this dynamic is driving prices through the roof, forcing people to do what happened in 2008 by paying more than they can really afford.

These lingering effects from the Great Recession will eventually be resolved because of the hard work and resilience of the American worker but will have to be coupled with the patience of the American consumer who is being forced to wait and do without for the unforeseeable future.  Since many of the fraudulent activities and unwise spending practices of pre-recession times have been regulated and curbed somewhat, it is unlikely that in the next down cycle we’ll see such hard times.