About Camden County, GA

This recently appeared in the Jacksonville Fl Times Union reported by Kevin Turner. I thought it was very interesting article and worth repeating! Here is the original link:http://jacksonville.com/business/2010-02-08/story/bill_watson_says_real_estate_recession_wont_last_forever

Who would have guessed that Marvin Gardens, Boardwalk, Park Place and Atlantic Avenue could lead to Girvin Road, Boardwalk Drive, Park Avenue and Atlantic Boulevard?

But that's what happened for Bill Watson.

While attending Stetson University in the late 1950s, his love for the classic Parker Brothers game "Monopoly" steered him away from a career track in the insurance industry toward real estate. He returned from college, did a stint in the military, and went right back to real estate upon his return to Jacksonville.

He founded Watson Realty in December 1965, and has since grown it into the top-selling real estate company in Northeast Florida, with more than 20 percent of the market's sales in 2009.

Watson today has 1,288 Realtors in its 39 residential sales offices in Northeast Florida and South Georgia. In 2009, the company sold 5,702 homes or condominiums in the Jacksonville metro area - up nearly 25 percent from 2008 - and 9,610 throughout its network, which stretches from St. Marys, Ga., to Orlando, Watson said.

In March 2003, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan was in an audience that heard Watson give a prediction nearly unheard of in the gathering real estate industry's boom that year: He said a recession in the industry would arrive by October 2005. His prediction was off by six months; the industry took its downward dip in Jacksonville around April 2006.

Watson speaks softly and with a relaxed pace and has more predictions to offer.

What do you see for 2010?

I think the market's going to be flat for real estate values. Certainly through the first half. Then I think there's going to be a little stabilization and I think a 1 percent, or 2 percent increase in values. You're going to see when that market moves, it's going to move pretty fast. Between now and the end of the tax credit program, this is a great time for somebody to buy. You're going to see sales work up. And probably, right after that expires, you're going to get a little bit of a dip, but your dip is coming at the peak of the season, so you may not get the dip. You're going to have a lot of people come in and make a decision prior to April 30.

If you change the supply and demand, you change the value. Simple economics. We're seeing the number of units for sale come down.

Once water seeks level, that means we have washed a lot of these things out. That's the reason it's going to be flat, probably, until the end of the year.

What are the key factors that will determine whether and to what degree sales volumes will increase?

Watch the retail. I think they're going to pick up this year. I think you're going to have a slow recovery. It's going to be what we experienced in the '60s. It's a great time to buy a home, but you're not going to see these great appreciations that you had.

Once you get into an inflationary situation, you've got a double-whammy. It's going to start hurting so many other things. But the real estate values are going to show slow, steady growth. I think normal is when you get 2 percent appreciation, 3 percent appreciation in real estate, unless we get the inflation we had in 1979. I hope we don't run into that.

What do you think is going to happen to the new home market?

My guess it's going to be three or four years before [new home sales recover]. There are so many lots for sale.

How rapidly has the Internet changed the real estate business and what do you see on the horizon?

I think the business is constantly changing. And I think the Internet is becoming a bigger initial source for the customer to find out initial information. But I still see that you've got to get face-to-face with the decision-maker. Even though you can see all the information on the Internet, seeking the real thing is a lot less cookie-cutter. The Internet is going to continue to be a big part, but it's going to continue to get more competition. There's going to be a lot more players in the marketplace.

To what degree is availability of credit a problem in home sales?

When the banks get in trouble, what do they do? They hunker down. And the banks have hunkered down, so financing is difficult. You can get a mortgage, but you really have to have a good credit report.

It looks like there are about 24 Real Estate Agents here in Camden County GA that are registered with Active Rain. I think that is great but can't begin to tell you how many agents are in this county. I was hoping there were more St Marys GA Real Estate Agents that keep up with their blogs here. The few I have met are great people and seem to very professional and caring Agents.

So my call out here is to all of the St Mary GA Real Estate Agents to blog here on ActiveRain or on WordPress. Every Agent should feel The Power of ActiveRain and The Power Of WordPress.

ST. MARYS - Conservation groups are challenging in court the Navy's decision to build a $100 million undersea warfare training range 57 nautical miles off the Georgia and Florida coasts.

Lawyers with the Southern Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia on behalf of 12 conservation groups, the Humane Society of the United States, Defenders of Wildlife and Natural Resources Defense Council among them.

The suit claims the Navy and National Marine Fisheries Service failed to study the environmental impacts of building and operating a 500-square-mile sonar range off the South Georgia and North Florida coasts.

All environmental impacts should be evaluated before building the range, not after, to determine the threat the range could pose to endangered right whales, the suit contends.

Lt. Laura Stegherr, a Navy spokeswoman at the Pentagon, said Thursday she can't comment about the lawsuit because Navy lawyers haven't read it yet.

The Navy has said the range's effect on whales would be negligible. The Navy plans to build an underwater network of 300 sensors connected to shore by fiber optic cables buried at depths of 120 to 1,200 feet.

The Navy said it was confident construction wouldn't harm whales because work would be suspended during the five-month calving season, which runs from mid-November until mid-April.

In documents filed in court, the groups opposed to the range argue that more research needs to be conducted before operations begin.

Opponents claim the sonar grid, which will be used to help detect submarines during training exercises, could harm right whales, which give birth to calves in waters near the site in winter and care for them there before swimming north in the spring. Fewer than 400 of the animals remain in the North Atlantic.

"The Navy's decision to shoot first and study the environmental impacts of using this facility later simply makes no sense," said Sharon Young, field director for the Humane Society. "The Navy is playing Russian roulette with one of our most imperiled wildlife species."

The Navy considered four sites for the training range for surface ships, submarines and helicopters - Jacksonville, Charleston, S.C., off the southeast coast of North Carolina and the northeast Virginia coast.

Close proximity to bases that would use the range, as well as good support infrastructure and training efficiency, led to selection of the waters off Jacksonville. The range, which is scheduled to be operational in 2014, will be used by vessels from Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, Mayport Naval Station and bases elsewhere in Florida.

Katherine Wannamaker, a lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said right whales could be endangered further "in the only place in the world where vulnerable females give birth to and care for their calves."

"While we recognize the Navy's need to train, there are many ways to accommodate that need without introducing multiple risks of harm into such a sensitive area," she said.

Alex Kearns, chairwoman of St. Marys EarthKeepers, said her organization passed a resolution opposing the range last year. The Navy should not ignore the environmental concerns and thoroughly study the issue before starting construction, she said.

Other locations should be considered "in an area that does not encroach upon the designated critical habitat of an endangered and struggling species," she said.

"To construct a $100 million range and then seek permission to use it is ludicrous," Kearns said. "I believe that the Navy hopes that the public and organizations will succumb and say, 'Oh well, if you spent all of that taxpayers' money, you might as well use the thing.' Ridiculous."

The U.S. Supreme Court recently weighed in on the issue of military training vs. protecting whales - and sided with the Navy.

In November 2008, the court threw out restrictions on sonar use that lower courts had imposed on the Navy during training exercises off the coast of southern California, saying the need for a well-trained military trumped possible harm to an unknown number of marine mammals.

Some environmentalists argue that sonar can disrupt whale feeding patterns, and in extreme cases can kill whales by causing them to beach themselves. However, scientists don't fully understand how sonar affects whales.

The Georgia lawsuit differs from the California case because there are other threats aside from sonar and because the right whale population is extremely fragile, Wannamaker said

Yesterday my wife noticed a small amount of mold on a baseboard in our office behind a filing cabinet. It did not look like much so I was not too worried. I started cleaning the mold off when I noticed the baseboard had mold behind it as well. Now I started to worry because there was more than just a small amount of mold.

To make a long story short I was forced to open up the wall from the floor to the ceiling. This was no easy task since we have 12 foot ceilings. What I found was nasty. The plywood sheathing was destroyed by moisture two feet across and 10 feet up from the floor. There were also carpenter ants that had eaten away part of the 2X4 stud. Not to mention that all of the wood was very wet.

It looks like the water damage was due to the fact that the gutter in the outside corner did not lay up against the outside wall and the water ran down the wall and entered the house and ran down the inside wall. So now I have to fix the roof, the wall and the inside wall. Even though I can do some of the work myself it is still going to cost me some cash to fix this right.

Moral of the story is that the little mold you see maybe a lot worse than you think.

Tonight we are suppose to get to a low of 20 degrees. That will be a record and one of the coldest temperature for us in over 50 years. It looks like allot of my plants are trees are going to die or at the least get some real cold damage done to them. And to think we moved from the Midwest to enjoy the warmth of Northern Florida and Coastal GA. Now where is that long underwear!