It's fun to imagine a housing turnaround

By James Thorner, Times Staff Writer
In print: Friday, March 28, 2008

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The housing market is going to correct itself at some point. It's as inevitable as Florida sunshine. We've been having real estate cycles since Andrew Jackson pursued the Seminoles down the peninsula.

In honor of upcoming April Fools' Day, let's look ahead and imagine what our next housing recovery might look like. Here goes:

You know the housing market is humming again when &

• The Pinellas Realtor Organization and the Greater Tampa Association of Realtors recruit their 25,000th members. Hair spray, nail polish and Cadillac sales skyrocket.

• Laid-off pipe welders from Akron with $55 in the bank start getting the itch to be Florida condo tycoons again.

• The giant Popsicle stains on the carpet, the jagged holes in the drywall and the bug-eaten lawn are considered take-it-or-leave-it options when purchasing a home.

• Donald Trump whirls into Tampa with his eighth wife to launch a new condo tower. This time he boasts that the tower will be the widest in the Tampa Bay area, and the first tenant is Rosie O'Donnell.

• Model home center employees stop pleading for sales with sad puppy eyes. They ignore you again like the no-buy, tire-kicking hayseeds they always knew you were.

• Mortgage companies resume lending to the deceased. The only underwriting requirement is that the borrower had a pulse in the past quarter-century.

• House hunters work up an insatiable hunger for flimsy light fixtures, bowed walls, cracked grout and mildew-splotched roofs. Builders are happy to oblige them.

• Florida farmers uproot their last orange tree, ship the last steer to the stockyards and retire to a quieter place — like Los Angeles.

• Urban planners tire of automobile congestion and get serious about building commuter rail lines. After years of hand wringing, the only viable train runs through Busch Gardens and goes "toot, toot."

• Newspaper columnists stop writing tripe about the terrible housing market. The public issues a sigh of relief.

James Thorner can be reached at thorner@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3313. Read more about area real estate at blogs.tampabay.com/realestate.