Foreclosure tourism
I guess this illustrates something about the new media terrain… not sure exactly what. An email today from local photographer Tim Harrison:
Hey Bill,
Here’s a link to a story the Toronto Globe and Mail ran today about the “U.S. Housing Mess” from the perspective of Cleveland. They sent a reporter down and hired me–a local photojournalist–to make the images. I am a regular follower of your blog and used your maps to find homes that were specifically foreclosed to illustrate the point. Thanks. Unfortunately the images aren’t online, but the story is here:
Thanks again,
-Tim
You’re welcome.
The G&M article breaks little new ground, but after all it’s for Canadians… for whom, as the piece points out, subprime mortgages are an exotic American phenomenon. Just one more way their system lags behind ours.
But all these Foreclosure Epicenter pilgrimages by the international press have got me thinking about an exciting new possibility: Foreclosure tourism.
New Orleans is apparently using its disaster lemons to make hospitality-industry lemonade, pitching corporate meeting planners on the opportunity the city offers to incorporate “voluntourism” events in their conventions. You know… stay in our beautiful downtown hotels, enjoy the Bourbon Street nightlife, spend a few hours on a work crew in the Lower Ninth. You can’t get that experience in Orlando!
I don’t necessarily think 20,000 boarded-up houses represent the same opportunity for Cleveland. But all this press attention from Canada and Europe does make me wonder: Could Positively Cleveland persuade some of the 15 million Canadians, 5 million Western Europeans, 3 million Japanese, etc. who visit the U.S. annually to follow their journalists to Cleveland, the Epicenter City, and see with their own eyes the mean streets where the International Financial Meltdown was born?
How about the nation’s first and only Predatory Lending Museum? We could have our international guests participate in authentic role-playing games (”Mary, you be the mortgage broker this time, I want to try pumping up the appraisal”) and view a faithful re-enactment of the County Sheriff’s Sale (the real one is already pretty crowded, and only happens on Mondays). Who could resist an American courtroom drama like (just spitballing it here) “Foreclosure Magistrate Judy”?
And every Summer weekend, seminar-trained investors and TV infomercial fans could gather in the courtyard for a Property Flip-Off under the stars. What a perfect sponsorship opportunity for e-Bay!
Speaking of sponsorships, maybe we could hook the Museum up with an annual Subprime Securitization Hall Of Fame induction dinner — in New York, of course.
Obviously it’s only a rough concept at this point. But we better not take too long checking it out. I hear some of those reporters are visiting Detroit, too.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:35 am
The French journalist that Jim Rokakis and we talked to at the end of October, Phillippe Grangereau, did his own video. It’s good to see that now the mess is now turning into a jobs-creation program for our locals.
As a side attraction, in your Carnival of Financial Horrors+ (or Whores, if you want be unkind), we could have a Booth of the Endless Loop where the foreclosure tourists win $50,000 and 12 foreclosed NEO properties of their choice if only they can break out of the loop of abuse, being bounced from the bank to the foreclosure attorney to the loan servicer to the trust to the new servicer to the regular law form and then back to the bank, which continues to disclaim any knowledge of anything.
You can get tips on setting up the booth from Jack Kahl’s buddy, Professor Roger Blackwell, if he can now do consulting work from prison. We understand that Blackwell, long before he was incarcerated, set up a similar program for AT&T. The loop is constructed such that a person either gives up and slinks away or goes mad. I think there is a playbook that goes with it.