September 2008

As I sit here in the pouring rain ( well, it's ouside actually) I had a thought about this time last year.
I looked back at my blog posts then, and it is clear in retrospect we were very very close to financial Armageddon. The Lehman collapse was clearly the catalyst, but from re-reading what I wrote then, nearly every financial institution worldwide was on the brink and only escaped because after Lehman, the Central Banks and Governments simply handed out as much money as was necessary to keep things going.
So where are we now?
Well, another two of our tenants just upped and walked away today. We've been nursing them for some months, but even that hasn't helped. The length of time this is going on is what is killing - not the severity, the continuing daily struggle to stay afloat. You can only tread water for just so long. This time last year we were 100% let. As of now we are down to just over under 29% empty.
I always judge how things are by how many people are asking for a bit of space.
I've had just one in the last 3 months.
Even this lying government says it won't start improving until after Christmas.
And this time last year I predicted it would be Spring 2010 before we had finally, finally reached bottom and started to improve...