Business is great and everyone’s happy. Let’s love it while it’s here.
In visiting with top people in the business over the past few weeks, they’ll invariably turn the conversation to 2002. Record years by the big companies, record years by most of the independents.
Everything else in the world has gone to Miami in a handbasket, and we’re fat, happy and looking back.
What about 2003?
If it isn’t a great year for you, it’s your fault.
“We had a phenomenal year two years ago and last year was better,” said a local lender. “This year, our projections are for a better year. A lot better.”
A few days earlier, the owner of a major real estate company reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a folder.
“Two years ago, we did a record business,” he said, mentioning a number so big that it was numbing. “Last year, we did this much” ... another big number which was a third bigger ... “and there’s no reason we won’t go that much bigger in 2003.”
Those two men were big boys. Big companies you know, and they reflect what people at other big companies would say.
It isn’t different with the independents.
“We don’t see the end,” said one. “It has to be there, but we can’t see it.”
The mantra is the same: we have steady growth, our economy isn’t dependent on fractious elements such as tourism, and Florida is the place everyone wants to be. After all those years of being South Georgia, we now seem to be the top of Florida — remember when the economists predicted that we’d eventually succeed because Florida was filling up like a bottle, and we were the top of the bottle?
That day apparently is here.
Now, you’ve been waiting for the usual end to writings such as this, something like “It’s good now, but the day is coming ...” that’s followed by a screed of doom, gloom and depression.
Not here. Too many smart people are saying the same thing: the world has come to us and our position today is perfectly suited for unlimited growth. You can gripe about North Florida is you wish, but people in other cities will have no sympathy: we have all the things they may or may not have, and probably don’t: reasonably clean government, little pollution, good weather, reasonable traffic, plenty of land, etc.
This rainbow seems to have pots of gold on both ends and in the middle, too.
Fun, isn’t it?
— Fred Seely is editor of Realty/Builder Connection and can be reached at