News About Properties

Investor’s Business Daily: Condotels: A Branded Urban Lifestyle For Second-Home Owners

“Moonlight as a VIP. Guests demanding top-rate business facilities fully wired for maximum productivity share the elevator with travelers on the prowl during a hedonistic holiday of beauty treatments, top restaurants and a lively night life.”

Sound like your cup of tea? Well, for just a bit over $500 a square foot you, too, can buy a piece of the new W Hotel & Residences.

The focal point of Victory Park, a $3 billion minicity sprawling across 75 acres near the heart of downtown Dallas, the 250-room W Hotel will set a new standard of opulence when it opens in June. But the hottest properties in town are atop the hotel: 66 condos priced from $400,000 to $7 million.

Potential foreclosures climb as housing market cools [South Florida]
There’s trouble in the bubble.

After three years of rapidly inflating real estate, loose credit and dicey financing, the number of court filings notifying Palm Beach County property owners they are facing foreclosure is rising.

Martin County’s pre-foreclosure filings are at their highest level since February 2005, and in St. Lucie County 113 pre-foreclosure notices were filed between Jan. 1 and March 23.

Freedom Village sold for $95M

A Tennessee company has bought a bigger chunk of the area’s retirement-care market with the $95 million purchase of Freedom Village.

American Retirement Corp., backed by a real estate investment fund, entered an agreement to buy the retirement community near Blake Medical Center from Westport Senior Living. The move further solidifies ARC’s foothold in the region. The purchase will bring the number of units in the area owned by American Retirement to 2,700.

“We will, by association with our other communities, have a good size critical mass in the Tampa-Sarasota-Bradenton area,” said Ross Roadman, ARC’s senior vice president for investor relations and strategic planning.

Possible flood-map changes stir anxiety [Orlando]

Worried how changes to flood maps could affect them, about 100 Seminole County homeowners gathered Wednesday night to get more information from federal and local officials.

It’s a process that will be repeated around Central Florida as the federal government, using new technology, spends $1 billion to redraw the flood-plain maps throughout the nation. Those maps will take into account topographical changes caused by development.

Another meeting is set for 7 to 9 p.m. today at Lake Mary Elementary School, 132 S. Country Club Road.

KB Home bets on Stewart, New Orleans

KB Home bets on Stewart, New Orleans
It’s 10:30 p.m. in Paris, and Bruce Karatz, CEO of home builder KB Home (KBH) , has just finished dining with Yves Carcelle, CEO of the Louis Vuitton luxury brand, at the George V hotel. Karatz is in town for the board meeting of KB’s French subsidiary, Kaufman & Broad. Last year, KB built 37,000 homes in the USA and France and had sales of $9.4 billion. The Los Angeles-based company has built homes in 15 states, with its largest operations in California, Texas and Florida.

Recently, though, with signs that the U.S. real estate market is softening, KB warned investors that cancellations rose in December and January. Karatz has rescheduled his phone interview with USA TODAY’s Noelle Knox twice in one day and offers his apologies as the conversation begins.

Eager buyers keep eye on Holiday Isle resort deal

The pending sale of Islamorada’s Holiday Isle may be stalled, but other potential buyers are eager to swoop in. Either way, this might be its last spring break, since a luxury rebuild is a likely outcome.

Four would-be buyers are hovering around the troubled sales talks involving Islamorada’s Holiday Isle resort in hopes the deal falls through, a representative of the owner said. A federal bankruptcy-court judge on Friday granted a West Palm Beach developer an extension on its $98 million purchase contract for the famed honky-tonk resort on the ocean.

An entity controlled by Ceebraid-Signal filed for bankruptcy protection in February in a last-ditch effort to secure financing before the contract expired. Judge Paul Hyman on Friday agreed to give Ceebraid until April 28 to close on the sale.