Missing the bus on cutting your losses

It was about the same time. It could have been the same day.

First I decided to buy a V-8 pickup truck. Then, in a stroke of Twomey (Irish ancestors) genius, I decided to invest in Florida land.

I need professional help.

Some stupid decisions are made by ourselves. Others are thrust upon us. After decades of Hondas (eight straight), I was forced into taking a V-8 monster as a loaner. After about two miles, I fell like crippled Philip Carey for Mildred, like Antony for Cleopatra, like Brad for – you get the picture.

That was back when gas was, oh, $1.70 a gallon. You remember that, don’t you? Now, the bottom has fallen out of the pickup market. My monster Tundra, extended cab, 17 miles-per-gallon monster is a bright red lemon, at least in the resale market. Fill-ups at Fowlie’s Overpriced Emporium often approach $70, or far above the weekly food budget.

Unless you are making money with your pickup, you would just as soon see it in someone else’s driveway.

Because of the pickup sales decline, automakers expect pickups to post their lowest sales this year since the beginning of the decade, even with incentives.

AP reported last month that the average discount on a Dodge Ram is $6,000, up $500 since January, according to the Power Information Network, which tracks industry trends. Chevrolet is paying an average of $2,343 in incentives on each Silverado pickup, double its discounts at the beginning of the year, when the truck was new.

Even Toyota is discounting the mighty Tundra by an average of $2,000, the Power data showed.

“We used to have a lot of people getting out of an SUV and into a truck,” said Scott Satiritz, general sales manager at Massey-Yardley Chrysler Dodge in Hobe Sound, Fla. Now, he said, “the average customer is not buying a pickup.”

“They’re into economy cars because of the mileage. Gas prices have really hurt,” he told the AP.

“The people who are buying trucks are buying them because they have to, not because they want to,” said Steve Magers, general manager of Elmhurst Ford in Elmhurst, Ill., about 20 miles west of Chicago.

Gone are the customers who purchased big trucks because they were “a status symbol thing,” Magers said.

As for the buyers who have defected, Art Spinella, the president of CNW, told the AP: “They won’t come back. They’re finding other vehicles that make fashion statements.”

Twice I tried to trade in my “fashion statement” and was shocked at the result. One was $3,000 for a truck (formerly) worth $10,000. I am stuck.

Along about the same time, I made my annual trip to the Sunshine State, where property values were doubling every two years. Honest to God. I waited until it was much too late and about a half-acre too short to cash in on the real estate boom.

Boom.

Last month, Reuters reported that until two years ago, middle-class retirees vied with property speculators for houses and apartments in Cape Coral, a town near Fort Myers on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Now almost every other house on some of its streets has a for-sale sign outside.

Guess who bought two years ago.

With a “bloated inventory” of unsold homes and a growing number of homeowners forced by mortgage delinquencies to sell – thanks to the subprime crisis and ensuing credit crunch – southwest Florida’s once warm clime for property has turned stone-cold.

“They’re saying that we’re heading for a recession, but I think we’re past that,” said new homeowner Linda Setterlund, referring to the housing glut and its effect across much of south Florida. “I think we’re headed more into a depression.”

There was a nearly 27-month supply of existing single-family homes on the Fort Myers market last month compared with a three-month supply at the height of the local boom in housing in August 2005, according to Denny Grimes, a top real estate agent in Fort Myers.

“There’s a lot of blood in the water, and there’s a lot more to come,” Grimes told Reuters.

Just guess whose blood is in that water.

I think I may jump into the stock market to recoup my losses.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.