how well is your local economy doing?

[martyb]

local economies

I live half the week in Lufkin, TX and the other half in Bossier City, LA. I don't see anything that jumps out at me in either place. In Lufkin, where I work, it seems like houses are selling, people are working, restaurants are pretty busy, shoppers in the mall etc. I don't have numbers or stats, but just my observation is that things are generally healthy. The government contractor where I'm assigned (Lockheed Martin) just completed an expansion and is looking towards another one. I realize it's a government-related thing, but hey...it means jobs for locals.

As far as Bossier City/Shreveport LA, things look to me like they're doing pretty good there as well. With a major military base that's currently getting a new additional command along with all of the personnel associated, as well as other large local employers, things seem to be moving right along. The real estate market seems healthy, only took me 30 days to sell my house last year, and I got very close to my full asking price. All my kids have jobs, wife has a job, I don't know anybody unemployed but I'm sure there are a few out there. I think I recently heard on the news that Louisiana's unemployment rate was around 6.9% overall, but I'll have to research to see if that's still true. I don't think it's that high for the Shreveport/Bossier City area. The 5 casinos sure seem to still be drawing crowds. I dunno, just my observations...

 

[lowflyer]

"Packed restaurants" is often used as an informal way to determine the general health of the economy. I see packed restaurants at times, but I also see alot of "I'll just have water" and "we'll be splitting....", both growing trends, I believe. Places that have self-serve beverages and no need to tip also seem popular. Not sure you can draw any conclusions from that, but it's interesting.

 

[Katsmeow]

Things over all seem fine. Before he retired DH's received a large bonus from Megacorp early in the year for last years work/results. Businesses here seem much the same. However, I don't think you can discount the possibility that people may be spending less. That is, they go to Target for X that they need and just buy X rather than spending a lot extra as they might in the past.

Real estate here seems deceptively fine. There are a lot of sales, inventory is not that high. Yet, prices aren't great for sellers. We've had our house on the market for 4 months. We have dropped the price 10% (and we started out with what we thought was a low price!). We are currently priced just barely above what we paid a few years ago. If we sell, we will be writing a check at closing. Sold houses in our area (we are high end at the $500k to $600k range -- know that isn't true everywhere) take a very long time to sell. Average is over a year and most houses sell for 20% or less from their original listing price.