There needs to be some kind of drinking game tied to breaking news alerts that tell us how grim our financial futures are. It began this morning on the Herald’s website with the news that employment in Florida is at a 15-year high and that it could get worse by next summer.
In related news, as our own Natalie O’Neill told us earlier this week, squatters are taking up residence in abandoned foreclosed homes. Then we get word state economists are sitting around this morning talking about
You never would have guessed it, considering we're more or less ground zero for the foreclosure crisis, but the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area is actually the 12th best place to start a small business, according to Biz Journals. The rankings cited South Florida's strong population and job growth. Between 2003 and 2008, we've actually seen 9 percent growth in jobs. However, we've fallen a bit from grace. The last rankings in 2007 had us at number three, while the 2006 rankings put as at numero uno.
Every month it seems Forbes puts out some dumb list of city rankings. Riptide always notes how dumb the list is, but posts about it anyway. Forbes appreciates any extra page views it gets, because that's half the reason they do it, but at the end of the day, these lists don't really mean all that much. Yesterday, we told you about "America's Most Miserable Cities," a list where Miami ranked ninth. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen finds these lists just as dumb as we do, and issued a statement about Forb
Miami Beach cops got the call just after lunchtime this past January 26. A woman reported the following: Two thin, unfamiliar men were lurking in her neighborhood between a yellow $1.1 million waterfront house and an abandoned tan bungalow. They were carrying furniture from the houses to their pickup truck. "The home is vacant," she told cops. "And no one should be [inside.]"
When officers arrived, they spotted Amaury and Antonio Hernandez - both Cuban-born thirty-somethings -- lifting
​The Banana has a friend named Betty, who earlier this year picked up a two-bedroom condo on Brickell Avenue for $109,000. Betty got the unit at a bargain because it was in foreclosure. But you wouldn't know that by checking the Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser's online property search database, a tool used by everybody from real estate agents to regular
folks to help determine selling prices.
A search of Betty's purchase shows she paid $340,000 in 2006. That's the price the person who los
Riptide was feeling all warm and fuzzy this morning. No, it wasn't just from all the vodka in our coffee. (What, like you don't start your day with a little 'Russian java'?) Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0​The latest employment numbers came out this morning, and it looks like our Kanye-on-the-VMAs-esque disaster of an economy is finally on the rebound. The ArmaRecession may finally be hitting rock bottom. Yay!But then we talked to Peter Zalewski, head of Condo Vultures and both Riptide and Michael Moore
