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| Mike Mito, Sales Associate |
By: Mike Mito, Sales Associate
The only constant is change and things can change in ways you would never expect or have planned for.
In fishing, real
estate and oil and gas exploration location is everything! There may be only a few choice locations that
produce the desired results and those that can best take advantage of any
situation are those that have the foresight, knowledge, tools, experience and
skills to be flexible and prepare for any inevitability.
Adapt or die
As a child growing
up in Canada I spent almost every summer in a small outport community, Harbor
Deep, located in Newfoundland in Northern Canada. Newfoundland, for much of its
history, has been known for its rich fishing grounds but technological
improvements, mismanagement and overfishing decimated what had been a goldmine
and resulted in a moratorium on the two main species of fish, Cod and Atlantic Salmon.
The changing world
was already putting significant pressures on outport life but the lose of the
fishing industry amounted to a death knell; Harbor Deep ceased to exist back in
2002 when the population voted to accept a resettlement agreement put forth by
the Canadian government. The moratorium amounted to the loss of the only real
industry in the town; villagers even faced severe fines for catching fish for
their personal consumption. No fish, no jobs, no livelihood or quality of life and
no reason to stick around. What had once been
a prosperous little fishing village became a ghost town overnight.
I see many
parallels between the fishing industry in Canada and the current situation with
the oil and gas industry in the Gulf, technology has allowed us to recover more
oil and at a lower cost making the financial metrics of off shore production harder
to justify. It may be safe to assume that the price of oil will go up in the
future, as producers who are over leveraged, poorly managed or too costly are
run off by low or non existent profit margins thus limiting supply and driving
prices higher; as to when that may be, it is very hard to say. Those with the
vision and foresight can find value in the current market as companies are
forced to liquidate or look to get underperforming assets off of their balance
sheets to allow themselves to run leaner and operate within the current
economic reality.
Those who bury their heads in the sand will be left in
the dust while those with vision will see opportunity.
Re/Max Commercial
is happy to offer for sale the following properties for the opportunistic buyer:
Feel free to reach
out to us regarding our perspectives on the economy, its impact on commercial real
estate and asset valuation and where we feel value can be found and how to best
take advantage of the current market to position yourself for the future.
