Perrysburg Blog

When Perrysburg was designed – and by the way, it is one of only 2 cities in ENTIRE COUNTRY planed by the Federal Government, the other being, of course, Washington D.C – it was designed with walking and horses in mind.

The “Boundary Streets” are each exactly 1 mile long.

They are laid out with the compass.

They “hold” the “numbered” streets and the “tree” streets in a wonderfully designed way.

You can walk just about anywhere “inside the Boundary’s” in about 10 or 15 minutes – depending on where you are starting or what you have to carry or how old your horse was I imagine.

But the automobile changed all that.

You can now live way, way out of town.   And not have a care in the world.

Until gas hit $4 a gallon.

Then you and I cared. We all cared.

I always thought that Riverbend was too far out to be a Perrysburg neighborhood.  Way out on West River Road – Anthony Wayne Schools.   Different phone exchange.  Still Wood County – but not the same schools, police, water/sewer.   In Perrysburg’s orbit, but not in it’s gravity.

At least back when gas was $2.25 a gallon.

Now?   At $4.00 a gallon??????   You are going to run into town for a pizza from Riverbend?  In a SUV?  Really?

I don’t think so.

I think commuting patterns are changing.  I think buyers are changing where they want to buy.  I even am hearing talk of fellow Realtors planning of not giving big free grand tours to maybe, wanna be buyers.  Not unless they sign a contract for buyer representation services BEFORE they hit the road.  Just costs too much GAS MONEY.   There are even markets where buyers pay money for agents to represent them on an hourly basis.  Can’t ever happen here.  Right?

Riverbend?   Too far out?

The bank has taken the ENTIRE subdivision back – the entire thing.  It’s all been foreclosed.  Broken dreams of broken developers and investors and builders lie all over the place.  What was going to be “Wood County’s Biggest Development” has become instead its’ greatest foreclosure.  http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5333/is_200402/ai_n21344307

I will have to change the names and places and details to protect the identities of those involved, but the following story you are about to hear is true.

I had to go and inform a man that he had to leave his Wood County home. It was his only home. He and his little dog lived there. As things sometimes happen in life, he had gotten very ill.

This caused him to miss work. This caused him to lose income. This caused him to miss house payments. The nefarious lender that had “helped” him to refinance his house had really and truly taken advantage of him. His house was overleveraged. His equity was who knows where. The whole fabric of his life was torn and tattered just like the tee-shirt he was wearing when he stood on his front porch, and told me his sad story.

Not a friend in the world but his little dog.

And the bank says you have to move out.

Now.

Today.

The Great Man?

He lives in the country club. He drives the fancy foreign car. For many years he has worked in the “financial services industry” helping people to refinance their homes and live out the American Dream.

One night after church three weeks ago, after he avoided all of my calls and attempts to communicate with him, I stopped by HIS house.

It’s a big house.

The lawn service had just been there.

But I had a message from the bank.

You have to move out too.

The little, forgotten man and the great man.

Both ends of the economic and social spectrum.

Both crushed and harmed and defeated by the economic forces roiling the waves of formerly placid Wood County. What is happening to our little County? A cursory examination will show you that many, many people are suffering www.woodcountysheriff.com/showpage.asp?id=7

Hundreds of families.

Why? I suppose it is because of how we are living and how we are treating each other.

The little men have been taken advantage of.

The great men? They need to study a Book. It teaches something about sowing and reaping.

The last time this happen we came “this close” to avoiding a revolution in this country.

I hope some people in the centers of power and “leadership” are paying attention. I really do.

The weather was great. And we have been doing too much traveling this year (conferences and meetings – they are not fun). So it is great to stay home and enjoy the perfect weather we have been blessed with all Summer in Northwest Ohio.

But we got wanderlust on Saturday evening and headed down SR-199 and SR-18 to the little town of New Riegel for some of the secret recipe ribs and chicken of the unique New Riegel Inn.

No Man Knows . . . what the ingredients are. But they are good.

And as we headed back home on a golden evening with all of the windows open and the sunroof fully retracted I decided to take a detour to the heart of downtown Fostoria.

That is not a trip for the faint of heart.

For the political policies that have allowed our industrial base to shift overseas have impacted right here – Ground Zero. Fostoria. Fo-Town.

Oh my.

No offense – but what a sad sight. A neutron bomb might have done less damage.

Where are the leaders?

Where are the the men of vision and action in Fostoria?

Where are the people with courage to do something different?

The roads run around the city – the jobs have left – the real estate is in disrepair – the capital is in the process of leaving – and the despair is palpable.

The city stands as a warning to anyone with the courage to make the drive and look and learn: “This Can Happen To Your City!”

Not one word of what I write is written about the people of Fostoria – just about what they have done to their town. They are my neighbors. They have just been victimized by the economic and political policies of the Federal and State goverments of this land.

But . . . Fostoria, if you drive in its’ core downtown area, is a warning that no town or city is guaranteed a future.

No city is.

No state is.

We all have to make wise choices.

If you are focused like a laser beam on Perrysburg, which I am trained to be when I have to (which is when I am listing and selling and consulting on Perrysburg real estate and for Perrysburg real estate clients, although this was a typical day in that I had to list a house in Toledo, list a house in Rossford, secure/list a house in Holland for a bank, and then list a house in Perrysburg all while my team was showing houses in and around Maumee, Perrysburg, and Toledo . . . but I digress)

IF you are focused on Perrysburg the number that arrests your attention today is -9%.

Because the Toledo Blade ran a story yesterday (www.ToledoBlade.com) about housing values in Toledo being off by 5.2%.

I was quoted in the story by John Chavez, the Blade’s excellent Business reporter.

But, you know, when you are quoted, you can never really get the whole story out.   John was working with the national numbers that the National Association of Realtors was using in a press release for all of Ohio.

But there is no “Ohio” real estate market.

If I had my own place to write – Oh, I do, right here! – I would say that ALL real estate is local.   All of the big national statistics have to be brought right down to the local level.

You want the truth about the Perrysburg market?  Then you had better use the right metrics and numbers and data to get it.

And the numbers have indeed flattened out – but if you look back to just one year ago, which is a time frame that most of us are very comfortable using, the median price in Perrysburg of sold homes is down by -9%.

$197,500 in July of 2007 to $179,750 in July of 2008.

That’s a BIG drop.

Are we done?  I don’t think we are going to see another $17,750 drop in Perrysburg over the next 12 months.

I do not see it.

Not in Perrysburg.

You can track what is happening with homes on the market anytime you want by looking at www.OnlyPerrysburg.com (shameless plug – it’s one of my websites, a pretty neat one I think – one button gets you every house for sale in Perrysburg!).

What will our market look like in July 2009 if it drops another 9 or 10%?

You and I most likely don’t want to know . . .

You are out showing houses – hard work?

Not really.

However the best part is often “showing off” the town to the out-of-towners who I am able to meet with and that I and my real estate team work with.

How many little cities can boast of a tiny little cafe that serves a European style breakfast on Saturday, complete with real brewed tea?

How many towns our size can offer the car show that you could have enjoyed this past weekend?

Row after row of perfectly polished dream machines and the local flavor that makes living here so wonderful.

And everyone stopped and stood at attention when the national anthem was played.

That’s my Perrysburg.

Not a bad place to live and not to hard of a town to convince a family to move to . . .