Posts Tagged real estate
How the Bubble Destroyed the Middle Class
by Rex Nutting
A lot of people say they are deeply puzzled by the slow recovery in the U.S. economy. They look at the 9+% unemployment rate and the mediocre growth in national output, and they scratch their heads and wonder: Where is the boom that inevitably follows a deep bust, such as we experienced in 2008 and 2009?
But there is no mystery. What other result would you expect from the financial ruin of the once-great American middle class?
And make no mistake, the middle class has been ruined: Its wealth has been decimated, its income isn’t even keeping pace with inflation, and its faith in the American economy has been shattered. Once, the middle class grew richer each year, grew more comfortable, enjoyed a higher living standard. It was real progress in material terms.
But that progress has been halted and even reversed. In some respects, the middle class has made no progress in a generation, or two.
This isn’t just a sad story about a few losers. The prosperity of the middle class has been the chief engine of growth in the economy for a century or more. But now our mass market is no longer growing. How could it? The middle class doesn’t have any money.
There are a hundred different ways of looking at the economy, and a million different statistics. But if you wanted to focus on just one number that explains why the economy can’t really recover, this is the one: $7.38 trillion.
That’s the amount of wealth that’s been lost from the bursting of housing bubble, according to the Federal Reserve’s comprehensive Flow of Funds report. It’s how much homeowners lost when housing prices plunged 30% nationwide. The loss for these homeowners was much greater than 30%, however, because they were heavily leveraged.
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Guest Contributors, The Economy on July 9th, 2011
Why isn’t Zillow dead?
Things are very good at Zillow,” Rich Barton, CEO of the online real estate company, was telling me. We’re in the thick of the worst economic crisis of a generation and a depressed real estate market, so this means that Barton is either a very clever CEO or an audacious liar. I was at first inclined to believe the latter, but left the interview convinced of the former. He’s a canny Web entrepreneur.
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing for Zillow. In October, Barton laid off about 25 percent of Zillow’s staff. He said he did it because he “couldn’t forecast” his business and had to assume the worst scenario. However, the trough following the 2008 bust ended up not being as bad as he thought it was going to be for Zillow, and the company is now back up to its October 2008 staffing level of about 130 people.
Zillow is currently growing, but in a different way than it was before. Page views and unique visitors are up. The site had 8.8 million unique visitors in March, which is a 70 percent year-over-year growth. Zillow has the twice the users at this point as Barton’s team originally projected. However, the revenue per unique user is down to a third of what he expected it would be.
Rich Barton builds cheap sites that focus on expensive audiences.
Posted by Tom Polanski in Social Media, The Economy on May 15th, 2009
eBrand Media is delighted to introduce Rob Jones as a regular contributor to eBizine.
By Tom Polanski
eBizine is very pleased that Rob Jones had expressed an interest in contributing to the eBizine community. We’re very impressed by the quality of his thinking and writing. Mr. Jones has been in the marketing department of BuildDirect since 2005 where he found himself quickly caught up in the enthusiasm of working within a company that believes in cutting edge technology and holds the core values of honesty, integrity, and respect for others.
It’s from these beliefs and values that Rob bases his approach to communications and marketing. Involved in nearly every aspect of the marketing process at BuildDirect, Rob has experience in writing customer-friendly web copy that drives traffic and sales, search engine optimization, writing effective eNewsletters, posting articles about products and industry news on blogs that drives interest and traffic, developing online press releases, and more.
When not continuing to learn about technology and how it relates to engaging with customers, Rob is a husband and dad, and keeps his own personal blog about one of his passions – music and music history.
Welcome aboard Rob…and thank you.
Posted by Tom Polanski in Advertising, Marketing, Opinions on July 18th, 2008