The Great South Florida Financial Divide
There has seemingly never been more of a divide in this country between the “haves” and the “have nots” than we’re seeing right now, and it only appears to be heading in a more dangerous direction.
Earlier this month, I spent some time in South Florida on vacation with my wife and kids, visiting with family and friends. Due to its proximity to South America & the Caribbean, South Florida has an international flair that you don’t find in most areas across the USA. There is a TON of Spanish & Portuguese as a first language spoken there. It feels different from much of the rest of the US, in a way that’s difficult to articulate.
How Many Million Dollar Properties?
There is a RIDICULOUS amount of money floating around South Florida. The level of opulence & pampering available to the wealthy in some areas would be considered obscene to the average American.
Looking at Zillow, within about a 20 mile radius north of Miami and south of Fort Lauderdale (Aventura, Hollywood, Sunny Isle Beach area), there are more than 900 properties & homes currently for sale listed at $1M or higher. That’s before property taxes, brokerage costs (6% on $1M is another $60,000!), HOA fees, title & inspection fees, insurance, moving and, eventually, maintenance.
Most of these homes are 2-4 bedrooms and 2-4 bathrooms, less than 3000 square feet - but they’re in a warm weather climate and close to the water, so they command premium prices, which is driven by market demand. There are also a lot of vacation homes included, where the buyer doesn’t even intend for it to be their primary residence, and there are still others buying to rent the homes out as an investment.
Who’s Buying All These Multimillion Dollar Luxury Homes?
Last year, my friend and his significant other bought into an exclusive new construction luxury community in Boca Raton. The place is… beautiful. For that kind of money, it SHOULD BE. It’s brand new, state of the art tech, ultra-luxurious furnishings & well-designed, layout-wise. The entire community (250 homes) was SOLD OUT within 2 years.
I drove to his place with the wife and kids, and we spent the day at their community pool. The overwhelming majority of the people I saw there - and it was crowded - were under 50, many with young families. (More about the experience of the day’s visit with my friend to come in a future article.)
I overheard a conversation between a grandparent in her 70’s (or 80’s) and someone in their 30s or 40s, with the elder unable to comprehend how so many young people can afford places like these. She speculated that it was mostly due to inheritance and wealthy parents helping, but the younger person reminded the grandparent that with the way crypto and the stock market has gone up the past 5 years, it’s entirely possible that many of those homes were bought with NVIDIA, Palantir & Bitcoin price growth.
The elderly lady was flabbergasted at the potential of a 30 year old able to commit to a a mortgage for a million dollars or more - with a monthly mortgage payment somewhere likely in the $8-10k and up range.
Apparently something is happening, because SOMEONE is buying all these houses…
There is definitely some kind of influx of international money there, plus we can’t dismiss the potential for BlackRock to scoop up some of these houses, driving up the market price artificially to charge higher rents in the future, further limiting the available supply of affordable housing. There seems to be a concentration of wealth there that you only find in major cities, and even the wealth here seems to be extreme, judging by the number of homes for sale listed at $18M and up - over 375 between Miami and Jupiter!
WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?!? Who can afford to buy “homes” for that much? Who is selling “homes” at such exorbitant prices? Something seems broken here. However, buys and sells happen ALL THE TIME.
Mortgage Math
Backing your way into what it would take to afford a monthly payment for a $1M mortgage on a $1.5M place:
banks require your housing cost to only be 25-30% of the monthly income to qualify for a mortgage
that means for a $10k/mo payment, that there would need to be an income of $30-40k per MONTH, to show that 1/4 (or even 1/3) of your expenses can go toward housing and you would be able to afford the monthly payments without the bank risking default.
That’s with 1/3 ($500,000) down, on a $1.5M place.
Remember, you still need to factor in:
property taxes
brokerage costs (6% on $1.5M is another $90k)
HOA fees
title & inspection fees
insurance
moving
and eventually, monthly maintenance
And understand that costs go up EVERY YEAR. Pretty much across the board. But income doesn’t always go up every year.
I didn’t realize there were that many jobs that were paying $350-500k per year in South Florida! There seems to be a large number of people showing enough income to afford all these mortgages, or holding enough cash to buy them outright and cover their expenses somehow.
The Great Class Divide
The ultra wealthy have been hard at work brainwashing the network-TV-watching-Boomer generation, for sure. I spent a few nights watching the 11 o’clock news with my parents, in their 70s and 80s. The first 15 minutes are fear mongering about murders at Walgreen’s, murders on the highway, murder-suicides, school shootings, hyper focusing on whatever Trump did that day, and now… the weather and sports! And finally, a “human interest” story that shows just how awful our society is, but one person managed to overcome it for 5 seconds.
Watching that same formulaic “news” every night before bed DEFINITELY has an effect on older, wealthy brains - people who are now living in constant fear of “immigrants” murdering them - while they live in insulated bubbles where there is practically ZERO chance of that actually happening.
Corporate media enthusiastically spews this propaganda, even when they know it’s false, on behalf of the owner class - for fear of losing their jobs and status. When it’s not there, they’ll manufacture it to keep the fear at maximum.
There has seemingly never been more of a divide in this country between the “haves” and the “have nots” than we’re seeing right now, and it only appears to be heading in a more dangerous direction.
It starts with the gated community. It’s done for “security” (because the news fear mongered them about their safety being in danger), but it’s also done to create exclusivity. Most of these gated communities have uniformed, highly trained employees - that know to keep their mouths shut and stay in line, or they’re quickly replaced. The proximity to that kind of wealth makes these jobs highly sought after. And even within the gated community, some go a step further and have more security at each building WITHIN the community.
The Info Bubble is THICK
There is equally a financial disconnect happening in the USA right now unlike anything I have ever personally experienced. The ultra-wealthy are insulating themselves into a world where they rarely, if ever, engage with anyone who is a genuine threat to them, and their money is empowering them to do it. That provides them a level of entitlement & lack of fear of repercussions for most monstrous behavior, because they can either just buy their way out of any trouble they may encounter, or they’ll use the legal system to their advantage, which they have the resources to do.
That leads to their most abhorrent views never being substantially challenged, leaving little chance for dissenting narratives (mostly about war, and our funding of it - and why) to ever make their way through the gates and security.
What Are Average Americans Experiencing? The Death of the “American Dream”
The average American is being priced out of a system that threw them overboard years ago, and they have no lifeboat. COVID wiped a lot of people out financially, too. A recent stat from statista indicated that the required income to afford a median-priced home ($120k/yr) is almost 50% higher than the median household income ($84k/yr).
George Carlin called it more than 20 years ago.
“You know what they want? They want OBEDIENT WORKERS. OBEDIENT WORKERS. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they're comin' for your SOCIAL SECURITY MONEY.
They want your fuckin' retirement money. They want it BACK. So they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it ALL from you sooner or later -- 'cuz they OWN this fuckin' place.
It's a big CLUB. And YOU AIN'T IN IT. You and I are NOT IN the big club. By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long, beating you over the in their media telling you what to believe -- what to think -- and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care.
Good honest hard-working people -- white collar, blue collar -- doesn't matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people CONTINUE -- these are people of modest means -- continue to elect these RICH COCKSUCKERS who don't GIVE a fuck about them. They don't give a fuck about you, they don't GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU. THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU -- AT ALL. AT ALL. AT ALL. You know? And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care ...
That's what the owners count on, the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that's being jammed up their assholes every day. Because the owners of this country know the truth -- it's called the American Dream ... 'cause you have to be asleep to believe it."
Hi! I’m Indie. I champion corporate-free independent media which challenges the narratives that cable & broadcast media push on behalf of advertisers.
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Money ruins everything
Economic Apartheid