The Great Flip-Flop

The Great Flip-Flop

In my younger days I did a lot of fishing in the waters of Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota and in the late autumn of every year we experienced a phenomenon on the lakes that the fishermen call “turnover”. The autumn days are still warm but the nights get colder and colder and the water on the top of the lakes becomes colder than the water on the bottom until one day the lakes “turn over”. The cold water sinks to the bottom and the warmer water down below rises to the top and for a few days the fishing is pretty good while the fish go crazy looking for that last meal before the water finally cools off enough for ice to form. You could call this turnover phenomenon a flip-flop.

There is another flip-flop going on. The real estate market in the United States is starting to slow down while the real estate market in Mexico is improving. As the baby Boomers begin to retire many of them choose to move to Mexico where the cost of living is cheaper and nice homes are a bargain. Why are there many nice homes for sale in Mexico and why are they a bargain? Well, for one thing there are quite a few Mexican people who immigrated to the U.S. who have done very well for themselves. Many of them were sending money back to Mexico to construct nice big houses for their families in pleasant locations and they were planning on returning to Mexico to live in their new houses. All of a sudden, however, their children have grown and become “Americanized” and they have too and their families have begun sinking roots in America. The are now thinking and talking and planning like Americans and Mexico does not seem to have the pull on them that it once had. A lot of them will never go back to Mexico no matter what the U.S. government tries to do. What will happen to the nice houses they have built in Mexico? The Baby Boomers will be delighted to buy them and retire in Mexico to live like gentry on their U.S. Social Security checks and whatever meager savings they have. So, there you have it…the Great Flip-Flop. In the end everything will even out. Patience is the key.