News About Properties

Condo converter’s debts pile up [South Florida]

Warren Hickernell looked like the boldest contrarian in the Southwest Florida real estate market last year.

He spent millions changing motels and apartment buildings into condominiums long after the conversion trend seemed spent.

But with banks foreclosing on six of his 18 conversion projects — demanding repayment of more than $17 million — Hickernell now looks like a gambler whose luck ran out after he kept letting it ride on red.

To make matters worse, Hickernell and his wife, Mary Lynn Desjarlais, find their names linked to Daniel Prewett, a felon who served time in a New York state prison for insurance fraud in the 1980s and was recently arrested in Italy on money laundering charges related to a cocaine deal.

Builder allows customers to use forfeited deposits

Frenzied flippers have walked away from contracts to purchase homes as the real estate market has slowed across Florida.

In their dust, they’ve left behind cash.

Rather than keep the cash, Taylor Woodrow is offering other buyers the opportunity to use forfeited deposits toward the purchase of a new home at a few of its communities, including the upscale Vasari Country Club in Bonita Springs.

“They will be able to buy a home that already has the deposit in place,” said Tim Diers, director of sales and marketing for Taylor Woodrow’s Southwest Division.

Condo switchers flee Florida

Miami’s condo market has nothing in common with its weather forecast these days; it’s freezing cold with a chance of bad investment.

That might explain why more Florida condo converters are showing up in the Triangle.

Meet Haim Einhorn. He has spent decades converting rentable apartments to for-sale residences in South Florida. But when Miami’s condo market went south, he headed north.

“Florida is saturated,” he says. “I saw the balloon popping. That drew my attention to get out.”

Hoteliers walk a fine line

With pictures of kids hanging on the office walls and rooms named after Gabriella, Francesca and Nick, the Captiva Beach Resort bears all the hallmarks of a family business.

But the people who are most interested in the future of this 20-room inn on Siesta Key spend just a few days or weeks a year here.

“I absolutely love this place — as you know,” Cindy Sheetz of Atlanta said to owner Robert Ispaso as she and her husband, George, checked in for the ninth year in a row. “It’s like coming home when you’ve been here that many times.”

The Sheetzes keep their favorite place in mind long before vacation time. George Sheetz recognized the beach in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution travel article, which the couple clipped and sent to Ispaso.

Flipped in Florida — Selling in a Housing Bust

There’s something about Florida residential real estate that attracts speculators like an alligator to an easy meal.

Abundant sunshine has been known to distort investors’ perception of the laws of economics from the 1890s to the present. With tens of thousands of properties languishing on the market, the quick profits seem to have evaporated.

The experience of Beth and Fabrizio Faieta, who have bought five homes in the Fort Myers-Naples area over the past few years, provides a tale of what happens when home prices sour.

The Faietas aren’t your typical Florida “flippers'’ who had hoped to buy and sell properties within six months of purchase, though. They said their holdings were intended to be long-term investments. Yet as the market stalled, buyers were scarce and expenses rose, and they were forced to sell.

Creditors left in the lurch

In the midst of an overheated market — where banks were hungry to make lucrative loan deals and many investors thought there was no direction except up for real estate values — a pair of developers went to work on Manatee County’s barrier islands.

Steve Noriega, 56, and Robert Byrne, 51, had a vision for taking laid-back, beachfront properties to the next level of luxury and sophistication. They convinced more than 30 individuals and 20 banks to help them pull it off.

All told, Noriega and Byrne borrowed $43 million, using $26 million of it to buy two dozen properties from Anna Maria Island to northern Longboat Key. They then submitted plans to build 33 condo units and 15 homes.

Five years later, all they have to show for their grand vision is a partially constructed luxury home, four duplex apartments, a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing citing $33 million in unpaid debts and a collection of angry investors.