"Here it's up or out and I won't know if I am one of the up or the outs until September."
That's what a lawyer who works in Manhattan lamented last night at a 12-step meeting we both attend. She is an associate at a top law firm in Manhattan.
Then she began her fantasy about chucking it all if she's not an up, selling the house in Darien, and moving west to work in a nonprofit which helps substance abusers. She's willing to return to school to become certified in that field.
But there is a hitch in that dream. Her mortgage on her modest home in Darien, Connecticut is underwater. A number of Manhattan lawyers live in Fairfield Country, CT. There the housing market continues to be in freefall. For example, on BUSINESS INSIDER, Keith Jurow provides the awful numbers. He cites statistics from real estate company Wm Raveis. According to the Raveis website, housing prices have gone down 10.7% in Fairfield County this year versus the year before. In Darien they are down 13.5%.
That means that lawyers knocked out of the box will find it more financially difficult to pull up stakes and go for something different. The old thinking was to sell the house, rent, and then use the money as a feeder fund for something else.
The other day, an acquaintance in Darien told me that she did get an offer on her house and was relieved. She wants to relocate to a lower cost location in northern Connecticut. She added that the offer "wasn't much." Also, she will have to find out if the bank will give the mortgage.
For Connecticut, the housing market hasn't bottomed out, not yet. According to experts on the legal sector, neither has the market for lawyers. There will be more reductions in manpower because of the pressure to reduce costs. That has become an issue most law firms can't duck after the collapse of high flyer Dewey & LeBoeuf.