News About Properties

Real estate bargains leave rural towns reeling in change

Put a piece of a small Kansas town up for sale and it could wind up like Rexford in Thomas County, whose downtown has been bought up and turned into a religious conference center.

Or it could be like St. John in Stafford County, where a national bounty hunting school bought and moved into the former Methodist church.

Or it could be like Ramona in Marion County, where two sisters from California bought four houses and created a hot spot of events and activities for the town’s 94 residents.

That’s the gamble small towns make when they offer what they have in abundance: cheap, attractive real estate.

Builder shifted deeds around [South Florida]

Bradenton real estate investor Michael Horner bought a house lot in September 2005 from Construction Compliance Inc.

When he figured out that the lot in North Port wasn’t big enough for the house he wanted, the St. Petersburg-based company took it back and sold him a different one.

But the company that made the second sale was Battle Development Group.

Horner said he noticed that a different entity was on the second deed, but he didn’t much care.

Easy Cash Uplifting Investors

The fuel behind New York’s record-setting real estate bonanza is the sizzling market for capital, and both buyers and lenders predict that cheap financing will be available for real estate investors into the foreseeable future. The availability of investment capital set fire to the real estate investment sales market last year, when transactions topped $30 billion. Considering the preliminary sales that are in contract for 2007, I would not be surprised to see the following advertisement: “For sale in New York City, office buildings, rental apartment complexes, hotels, and retail locations, priced from $100 million to $2 billion. Financing available for up to 100% of total purchase price, nonrecourse, interest only, and flexible terms.”

Real estate investors are confident capital will continue to flow into New York’s office market, where vacancy rates are dropping and rents are on the rise. One of the most active lenders in 2006 was Wachovia Securities. Last year, the bank was the leading lender in the $5.9 billion financing for Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town, the largest mortgage ever provided for a single property. “Capital is plenty; it also is now a freely tradable commodity,” a managing director at Wachovia Securities, Robert Verrone, said. “We only originate financing for what we can sell; so long as we can sell it, we will originate it.”

Ritz owner: Toss damages

Attorneys for the owner of the Ritz-Carlton, Sarasota, and home builder Taylor Woodrow Inc. are asking a judge to toss out the $34 million in punitive damages the pair were hit with in November.

Capping an eight-hour hearing Tuesday, attorneys for C. Robert Buford and Taylor Woodrow requested that Circuit Court Judge Becky Titus nullify a jury’s award that ended a five-week trial last fall tied to the luxury resort.

“It was improper for the jury to be permitted to apply punitive damages to an issue in which reasonable people could disagree,” said Taylor Woodrow attorney Christopher Griffin.

Tuesday’s hearing marked the first time Ritz-Carlton co-owner and Core Development Inc. founder Kevin Daves had met his adversaries in court since Nov. 23, when jurors concluded Buford and Taylor Woodrow committed fraud and conspiracy and were liable for other actions associated with the 88-unit Beach Residences condos connected to the Ritz-Carlton Beach Club, on Lido Beach.

Savvy S. Floridians cash in by renting homes to game fans

More than 100,000 visitors are about to descend on South Florida for the country’s largest sports event. What’s a homeowner to do?

Hundreds of them are seizing the money-making moment and offering their homes to Super Bowl fans. Asking from $150 a day to more than $15,000 for the week, South Floridians are posting online pitches of pads from Pompano Beach to South Beach.

‘’I already have 10 e-mail responses. One woman called me from California at 2 a.m.,'’ said Romina Llanes, a day after posting her one-bedroom South Beach condo on craigslist.com for $500 for three days.

Condo owners are hoping booked hotels and high room prices near the Feb. 4 game will steer some Super Bowl visitors their way. Owners of single-family homes are appealing to small companies and groups that need larger spaces. They’re posting photographs, maps, glowing descriptions and promises of fun in the subtropics.

No slump in S. Florida apartment market

The South Florida condominium market might be languishing, but according to at least one brokerage the apartment market remains robust, with low vacancies, rising rents and strong demand from both tenants and investors.

Every year, Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Brokerage Co. publishes the National Apartment Index, an analysis of 42 apartment markets around the nation. These markets are ranked based on criteria such as forecasted employment growth, vacancies, construction, housing affordability and rental growth.

In the 2007 index, New York City moved up four places to claim the top spot, surpassing last year’s leader, Orange County, Calif., which dropped to second. Fort Lauderdale ranked sixth, Miami, No. 13, and West Palm Beach, No. 15. All three South Florida markets fell on the list from last year due to instability in the local real estate market. But they still have strong underlying fundamentals that make brokers bullish for the long term.