{"id":1531,"date":"2010-01-24T15:39:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-24T19:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/01\/24\/the-scariest-thing-in-the-north-country-economy-your-house\/"},"modified":"2010-01-24T15:39:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-24T19:39:00","slug":"the-scariest-thing-in-the-north-country-economy-your-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/01\/24\/the-scariest-thing-in-the-north-country-economy-your-house\/","title":{"rendered":"The scariest thing in the North Country economy? Your house."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/watertowndailytimes.com\/\">Watertown Daily Times<\/a> is running a story today about home sales in St. Lawerence County, where median prices have dropped 14% and total sales have plummeted by nearly a quarter.<\/p>\n<p>Conversations with realtors across the North Country suggest similar numbers, though the texture of the real estate meltdown differs from town to town.<\/p>\n<p>So far, the property tax assessments for much of the region haven&#8217;t caught up.  <\/p>\n<p>Counties and school districts are still taxing our homes as if it&#8217;s early 2008, rather than early 2010.<\/p>\n<p>But when re-evaluations are done, I&#8217;m guessing that local governments across the region are going to find that their taxable property has shriveled in overall value dramatically.<\/p>\n<p>Second-home markets may prove to be the most volatile.  Waterfront homes may (or may not) hold some of their ludicrously inflated value.<\/p>\n<p>But the last few years before the bust, many back-lot homes were selling at premium prices to vacation-home buyers.<\/p>\n<p>Are those houses still worth $200-400,000?  It&#8217;s hard to imagine.<\/p>\n<p>Which means that as communities prepare for far fewer dollars flowing from Albany, they&#8217;ll also have to adjust their tax collection locally.<\/p>\n<p>If waterfront McMansions are no longer the cash cow, everyone else will have to get milked a little more when local governments work to balance their budgets.<\/p>\n<p>Or there will have to be deep cuts.  Either way, it&#8217;s a painful reality.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, there are other side-effects of a lackluster real estate economy.  <\/p>\n<p>A lot of our people were earning their livings as home-builders, remodelers or care-takers.  The demand for those services is far less bullish.<\/p>\n<p>The slow turnover of houses also raises serious questions about big, next-generation projects, including the condo development in North Creek and the luxury home development proposed for Big Tupper.<\/p>\n<p>What do you think?  Is your house worth what it was a few years ago?  Looking for bargains?  Comment below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Watertown Daily Times is running a story today about home sales in St. Lawerence [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}