News About Properties

While moving back to South Florida, it was getting tough to think outside the boxes: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Seven years ago, my husband, Ronnie, and I sold our Fort Lauderdale home and moved to Wisconsin. We stayed two years, then moved to Nashville. A few months ago, we decided to return to South Florida.

Blame it on January. After spending the winter here last year, we realized how much we missed South Florida. We knew real estate prices had risen, but we had no idea exactly how much. Sticker shock doesn’t begin to describe our condition when we learned the current value (tripled!) of our former house. I felt like someone had walloped me in the stomach with the Saturday real estate section.

Due to a good seller’s market and a terrific real estate agent, our house sold in two days.

Wait-and-see attitude may be best on refinancing

Question: My wife and I bought a second home two years ago. Because of its condition, it didn’t qualify for a conventional mortgage. We have a two-year balloon loan at 5.6 percent interest that comes due in April 2006. We will owe the entire principal in April unless we refinance.

Our banker suggests we follow this loan through its course and refinance next April.

Answer: Your banker sounds like a smart guy. Interest rates have risen slightly, but they probably won’t go up by much before April, so your upward risk is somewhat limited.

Tiny Briny Breezes draws brawny $500 million offer - OrlandoSentinel.com: State News

A secret suitor was offering to buy the entire municipality for $500 million — more than $1 million per mobile home. Over shuffleboard courts, pinochle tables and whittling benches, word of the fabulous price soon spread.

” ‘A million is a million’ and ‘Wow, a million dollars!’ ” said Bob Kraft, 78, a retired high-school English teacher from Detroit, recalling initial reactions to the proposal. “That looks good to a lot of people.”

Finding the Next Phoenix

Want to turn some heads at your next cocktail party? Tell people that buying real estate in Texas is a better bet in the short term than investing in California. It might sound bizarre, but it’s what some real estate gurus are telling their investors.

To get a feel for which real estate markets were hot in 2005 and in previous years, you could practically throw darts at maps of California and Florida to find winners. Arizona and other Sun Belt areas didn’t perform too shabbily either.

Waning Days of Grace for New Orleans Homeowners

Strains begin to show as mortgage reprieves are extended. Borrowers say some lenders demand lump sums at the end of forbearance periods.

As unpaid home-loan bills pile up, mortgage companies and owners of hurricane-ravaged property are still unsure what federal assistance they may get, and uncertain if they can salvage their investments.

Green Cay Village lowers the price of success

When Michele Robinson, a single mother, steps inside her new Boynton Beach area townhouse next fall, she can thank an unlikely alliance: two vegetable farmers who sold their prime land below market value with the stipulation that affordable housing be built on it; a pair of developers who agreed to make less money than usual in a booming real estate market; and county planning and zoning officials who cut through the red tape their regulations usually create.