Forbes Plagiarizes RE News Network
March 15th, 2006 | Posted in NewsOkay, not really, but we were at least a couple of weeks ahead of them in pointing out that “speculators” were much different than the “real estate investors” that CNNMoney.com was talking about.
In The Last Speculators (Forbes, March 27), Stephane Fitch writes:
The number of unsold condos for sale in and near Miami has more than doubled from a year ago to 2,232, says Miami Realtor David Dweck. Foreclosures nationally are up 45% in a year and in Miami now occur at twice the national rate of one per 1,117 homes, according to RealtyTrac. Some 25,000 condos are under construction in the Miami-Dade area–more than the total number of purchases in the last nine years combined.
Three-fourths of those are in the hands of speculators, says Jack F. McCabe, a Deerfield Beach, Fla. consultant to developers. “The demand is artificial. Most south Florida speculators have been selling to other speculators,” he says. “It works fine–until you’re the greater fool and nobody else comes along to pay that higher price.”
Note that they even reference the “greater fool theory” like we did.
