Showing posts with label bidniz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bidniz. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

What Happened in Vegas?

vegasboothTDR reports that Dixon's MO in Las Vegas was to met with reps from the sporting-goods store REI, and Target, reportedly already set to open a location in Mondawmin. The message = rich people live here:
The city has conducted its own research that often paints a better economic picture of Baltimore. For example, in late 2005, the Downtown Partnership conducted a study that showed that more than 3,100 households within a one-mile radius of downtown earned more than $75,000 per year. That compares to the $29,792 listed as the city’s median household income in 2004 by the U.S. Census.
(Hey, doesn't the picture of the city's booth logo make it look like a rowhouse on fire?)

Speaking of numbers, today's WSJ article about the Subprime Crisis is most appropriate to Baltimore and those who might attempt to escape it:
... beginning in the mid-1990s, the evolution of subprime lending from a local niche business to a global market drastically rearranged lenders' incentives. Instead of putting their own money at risk, mortgage lenders began reselling loans at a profit to Wall Street banks. The bankers, in turn, transformed a large chunk of the subprime loans into highly rated securities, which attracted investors from all over the world by paying a better return than other securities with the same rating. The investors cared much more about the broader qualities of the securities -- things like the average credit score and overall geographic distribution -- than exactly where and to whom the loans were being made.
In turn, the higher rate of homeownership encouraged businesses:
Suddenly, mortgage lenders saw places like [lower Charles Village, the West side, etc.] as attractive targets for new business, because so many families either owned their homes outright or owed much less on their mortgages than their homes were worth.