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Work is rather strange this week. The boss tells us to put in as much over time as we can manage. Or he will make it a mandatory ten hours over time. Now I don't mind the over time too much, unless of course we are not actually behind, so I clocked off "early" today, leaving me two hours of sun light left in the day.
But today, I decided a change in routine. With the camera in hand, me and The Blue Runner decided to hit some of my old stomping grounds. No, not the bars. Where I use to work, mainly all over the North West portion of Wichita.
In my last job, I was a utility locator. When a house was to be built, contractors would call Kansas One Call to report where they planed to dig. One Call then contacted the various utilities, who in turn contacted sub contractor I worked for. They would then dispatch me to go and "paint the lot." That is I would use technology to fine the telephone, KG&E natural, and KG&E (now known as Westare Energy) electric.
And boy, would they ever call them in. My section got at least 30 tickets a day, with most of them being re-called in. Every two weeks, they would have to re-call the ticket, forcing me to go out and paint the thing again. Of course, this meant I had to commit to memory much of the brand new subdivisions, and how the streets were laid out. Long before these streets were ever drown down on the municipality or county maps. And even though its been a few years, and a lot has changed, I had an idea of where all the hot building areas were.
So today, I visited some of them. And though I have no numbers, my eyes tell me that they are still building like made. New homes from every phase could be seen. From fresh streets still being cut, and new utilities being laid, to homes with play ground equipment set up in back. But I will say that I did not see a lot of taraforming taking place, but that doesn’t mean a lot because I could still see vast sections of ground already taraformed, but still waiting to be developed.
But there was one puzzle. The wicker dinette set placed out front of some of the homes, but minus any other sign of occupancy. No curtains in the windows, no fences or things in the back. Just by looking, its difficult to tell weather a house is lived on or still "quietly" on the market. And this question is not academic either. If it’s the later, than it's more sign of the real-estate bubble in place. For the high-end homes I visited, there was a lot of that wicker furniture. While in the lower end housing area, there was quite a few real-estate agent signs planted out front. When I worked as a utility locator, for sale signs were rare. Most homes already had owners for them before construction was completed, so such a house would never even see a for sale sign.
Still, with the labor market suffering here in Wichita, and the reposition rates here at record levels, one wonders where these families are coming from to move into these homes, and how is it that they can afford to buy these homes.
I have a couple of theories. One is that we see a funneling of buyers away from used homes, to virgin homes. Retailers may be pushing the virgin homes over the older ones. There may be insurance and tax deduction issues at work. And there is also a loan penalty involved when buying a used home over a new one. We know such a loan penalty is at work against used cars, so is it that much of a leap to envision the same thing at work for homes?
But one thing did seem clear to me. The housing bubble has yet to burst in Wichita.
Oh, and I did find another new trend. It looks like we are seeing the construction of more high end apartments here. In part of my route, I saw at least three new massive five story complexes going up. And apartment space here is in demand, though less so now with the labor strife. But these were clearly high end apartments, with rents starting at $1000/mo. And for Wichita, that is well-to-do. Typical apartments range from $300 to $600/mo.
Still no new, low end housing going up. All though that may be because I did not hit the right areas. (Mostly high end construction in the North West part of Wichita.) Never the less, low end new construction was an issue that the city & county has wrestled with recently.
PS: I did take some pictures. If you want to see them, than PM me, and I will have some of them e-mailed to you, once I have them developed.
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