News About Properties

Real Estate Investors May Resort to Prayer

As the president of Silverstein Properties, Larry Silverstein, recently remarked on my television show: “The capital markets’ dislocation in real estate is the worst I have seen in my 55 years in real estate.”

The dislocation of those markets has had a critical effect on the sales of commercial properties in New York City. Few properties are selling at values that were achieved in 2006 and 2007, and sales volume is down at least 15% from its peak.

“Investment sales for properties which were closed or under contract for the first six months amount to $14 billion, which is off from the total volume of $38 billion for first six months of 2007,” the chief operating officer for the New York metro region at Cushman & Wakefield, Joseph Harbert, said.

“Foreign investors, mostly from the Middle East, China, Ireland, Sweden, and Germany, accounted for 40% of the purchasers of property during the first half of the year,” he added.

Adjusting to a softer real estate market

A big reason that Fiona Saulness has saved as much as she has for retirement is real estate.

Not only has the 52-year-old made a good living as a realtor, her investments in her Arizona house (which she owns free and clear) and a Seattle condo (which she rents out) have helped her amass nearly three-quarters of a million dollars in home equity.

But if she continues to focus so much on real estate - at the expense of her investment portfolio - it may threaten her retirement plans down the road. In part because she’s been hoarding money in case she finds a third property, her hodgepodge of a portfolio is offtrack.

She currently has a quarter of a million dollars sitting in cash. Yet she needs to make more on her investments than cash pays, since she can’t count on earning what she did as a realtor at the market’s peak - in 2006, she made more than $200,000.

McCrary case cautions athletes

Michael McCrary had known Edward Giannasca for half a decade, and, until the former Baltimore Raven realized that he’d been cheated out of millions, he thought of the longtime developer as a stand-up guy.

McCrary trusted Giannasca so much that, with few questions asked, he handed him a $3million check three years ago for a real estate project that would convert a building in New Orleans into condominiums.

Giannasca, though, betrayed that loyalty, pocketing along with his other partners about $12 million in insurance money after Hurricane Katrina spoiled the deal and telling McCrary that the insurance claim they’d filed had been denied, a Baltimore circuit judge ruled Wednesday.

The judge ordered Giannasca and others, including developer Stuart C. “Neil” Fisher, to pay $33 million in damages to McCrary, who says he’ll use his experience as a cautionary tale for current and former NFL players.

Real estate: Just the right price

If you’re getting ready to sell your home and thinking of asking a little more than $200,000, you might want to think again.

“I would definitely drop it to $199,999,” said Bree Fary, an agent for Keller Williams Realty of Brevard in Melbourne.

If there’s a bright spot in today’s slow real estate market, homes priced below $200,000 might be it.

“That’s what’s selling,” said Judy Aubuchon, broker-owner of Classique Properties in Satellite Beach and 2008 president of the Melbourne Area Association of Realtors Multiple Listing Service.

Is Save Our Homes Portability Selling Houses? [Tampa Bay Area]

Raymond McIntyre’s office generated an interesting set of numbers this week: 222 people have moved to Highlands County, and brought their Save Our Homes tax exemptions with them.

Just 75 homeowners left the county, and applied to transfer their Save Our Homes elsewhere in Florida. Net gain: about three to one, said McIntyre, Highlands County’s property appraiser.

So, three real estate agents and brokers were asked, are people moving to Highlands County because they can buy a cheaper home, with lower taxes?

When people buy a home, they can apply for a $50,000 homestead exemption. If their home costs $100,000, the homestead exemption allows them to pay taxes on $50,000 instead.

Neighbors Are Left With A Mess [Tampa Bay Area]

Robert Ramirez awoke in the middle of the night to clanging metal and a rumbling moving truck in the back yard next door.

Evicted neighbors loaded their belongings and fled the two-story stucco home. They left doors and windows open, and trash and debris strewn across the lawn. It has been eight weeks, and no one has shown up to take care of it.

“This used to be a really nice, close-knit community,” Ramirez said, standing on his dark green lawn framed by lush plants. “Now, with that house here, there’s no way I could sell my house. I’m stuck, and my property value is falling.”

During the worst wave of foreclosures in U.S. history, the Riverview subdivision of Lakeside is a microcosm of the problems felt by hundreds of other Bay area communities.