News About Properties

Lawsuit charges that Fort Lauderdale developer sold undersized condos [South Florida]

A Fort Lauderdale real estate agent is suing the developers of the Las Olas River House luxury condominium, saying they cheated her out of living space.

Rebecca Riley said she bought a 2,600-square-foot condo last year from Tarragon Corp. and Omni Development Corp. But when she went to order flooring, the contractor who measured her condo in Las Olas River House said she had only 2,100 square feet of air-conditioned living space.

“He said, `Lady, I’ll sell you 2,600 square feet of flooring, but you only need 2,100 square feet,’” Riley said Thursday.

Homeowners warned about foreclosure ‘rescue’ scams

Kurt Hilderbrand worked hard for a decade to make his monthly mortgage payments, but a recent failed business dealt him the final blow: He was six months behind on payments and weeks away from losing his three-bedroom house.

That’s when the “foreclosure rescue specialists” began circling. They hounded him by phone. One even rapped at his front door, offering to bail him out.

Hilderbrand was so desperate to hang on to his Bellevue home that he struck a deal to sell it and lease it back — with an option to buy later.

Soft market teaches flippers an ever-so-humble lesson

Investing in real estate looked so sexy. Like the tech-stock bubble that turned college kids and housewives into day traders, the real estate boom turned insurance brokers, doctors and bicycle mechanics into real estate flippers, who would buy and then quickly sell homes for easy profits.

Now those profits are shrinking fast. Nearly one in five flippers who sold from April to June actually lost money on the deal, the highest level in 2½ years, according to HomeSmartReports.com, which today will release a report on flipping activity in 147 metro areas.

The vanishing act of speculators is accelerating the decline in home sales this year. That’s making life hard for home sellers but giving buyers a bonanza of choices. It’s also a stark reminder of the cyclical nature of real estate.

Planners OK replacing apartments with condos

The developer is cutting back and delaying his plans because of the slumping real estate market.

More than three decades after Gary Boruff became a landlord in Venice’s apartment district, his last tenants have been moved out and his rentals, which recently went for as little as $450 per month, are going condo.

Like other longtime landlords in Venice, where the city’s assessed land value has grown 160 percent since 2001, Boruff said he couldn’t keep rents low, pay ballooning property taxes and ignore the latest chance to sell.

Life Difficult for Apartment Owners, Tenants

When Jennifer and Terry Balvin first met, Terry owned a house. But after they married, the Balvins chose to live in her apartment at Martin’s Landing in South Lakeland.

“He is always telling me of the costs and hassles of just going through the purchase of the house — let alone the costs afterward,” Jennifer Balvin said. “With renting, if something breaks, someone else comes to fix it and they (management) pay for the repair . . .”

Remembering Peter Tosh

Fourteen years before the devastation in New York City, Jamaica, and indeed the world, suffered a loss, though clearly not of the same magnitude, when reggae revolutionary Peter Tosh was brutally murdered at his home in Barbican, Kingston by gunmen. Also killed on that fateful night, was Wilton ‘Doc’ Brown, a herbalist friend of Tosh.