Once a dream

Once a dream

fiction
edward w pritchard

In the 1980's into early 1990 I monitored and managed a $200,000,000 portfolio of mostly second mortgage home equity loans for an Ohio bank. Using the telephone myself, my telephone marketing staff and one hundred or so branch lenders to originated the loans until I left that bank I
very carefully and diligently  monitored about ten thousand loans for delinquency, family problems and impact from the national economy and rising or falling interest rates.

A dozen years later I returned to that same bank and collected delinquent commercial loans for that  bank for two years. It was during a time of transition for the national economy and myself.

During those fifteen years of banking experience with mortgages, appraisals, interest rates and home  and commercial loans I gradually developed a sort of dream for the end of my life concerning real estate.

I would move to Florida somewhere near Sanibel island and live cheaply in a trailer home and walk along the beach and look for gold doubloons or rare sea shells.

By 2007 I was out of banking and like most Americans down on real estate. I recall reading a New York Times article in 2007 by Peter S.Goodman titled "this is the sound of a bubble bursting" about the turmoil in Florida and in particular, Cape Coral Fla, which is near Sanibel Island, caused by the great Housing crisis of 2007 and 2008. Many people were hurt in that real estate crash.

Soon I will own no more real estate. On a whim I dug out one of my books by Michael Lewis the financial writer I like which contains a copy of the original Times piece of the Peter S Goodman article on Cape Coral Florida "this is the sound of a bubble bursting" which I reread.. After that I went on line to Zillow and found a nice neat and clean little trailer near the beach in Cape Coral Fla, I can buy for a payment of less than $200 a month. There's even shuffle board and boccie ball.

Hmm, interesting.