News About Properties

As ’subprime’ rates shoot up, owners despair [Central Florida]

Twanda Thompson doesn’t want to lose her home. But unless she can solve her mortgage woes, she and her four children may have to start looking for an apartment.

Like many would-be homeowners with below-average or poor credit, the Orlando woman took out a “subprime” mortgage during the housing boom to buy a place she really couldn’t afford.

Now her adjustable-rate mortgage is three months away from a boost in interest that will increase her monthly payment 30 percent. More increases lie ahead — and she already is delinquent on her loan.

“I’ve been on an emotional roller coaster,” said Thompson, a 34-year-old insurance agent. “It’s just very stressful. I’ve worked so hard to get this far, to have a home and raise my children. To lose ground now is not acceptable to me.”

Holdouts from condo sales fear bill

Some Florida condo owners are fearful of legislation that they say could make it easier for developers to force them to sell their properties.

Right now, many condo projects are safe from a hostile purchase by developers because of contracts that say all owners within the project must agree to a sale.

In particular, those contracts have protected aging waterfront condo projects that are targeted by developers who want to buy them, tear them down and build vastly more expensive and profitable new condos in their place.

The bill, now sailing through the Legislature, would allow a developer to buy a condo complex if only 80 percent of owners agree. The sale could be blocked, however, if more than 10 percent of owners oppose it (some owners may not be present for a vote but still oppose the sale.)

Real estate developer’s three-year plan starts bearing fruit

When a Florida-based real estate company doggedly pursues a small Farmington Hills-based REIT with three all-cash offers over a month, it’s difficult to find a word other than “flattering.”

After all, the final offer for Agree Realty Corp. [NYSE:ADC] topped out at $395.64 million, a 19 percent premium. But Agree Realty quietly spurned each bid.

The offers are symbolic of what’s happening in the world of real estate investment trusts. But they also demonstrate the confidence Agree Realty - landlord to the likes of bookseller Borders Group Inc., pharmacy powerhouse Walgreen and others - has in adding dots to its map and bringing at least one more national retailer into its fold.

The next eight months, says Joey Agree, the company’s executive vice president and son of founder, President and Chairman Richard Agree, will bear out that confidence in the company’s three-year plan.

Apache Shores couple losing ground - literally

No one could have prepared Brian McKinley for what the strangers told him that day.

Three people came to his home in Apache Shores to announce they had purchased one of the lots beneath his mobile home for unpaid back taxes.

McKinley was stunned. His wife, Teresa, was heartbroken. The McKinleys always had paid their taxes. The news that someone had bought a lot under their home was bewildering. They thought their property was one lot.

What they didn’t know is that their property consists of two lots, but the man who sold the property to them, Mike Burk, had deeded only Lot 25 to them. The second parcel — Lot 26 — remained in Burk’s name, according to the property appraiser’s office.

Sarasota-Bradenton sales buck national and statewide trends [South Florida]

Sarasota-Bradenton was a bright spot in an otherwise dismal national and state real estate market during March.

While national sales of single-family homes fell 13 percent and statewide sales dropped by an even larger 28 percent, Sarasota-Bradenton saw a 16 percent increase last month compared with March 2006. Panama City was the only other Florida market to increase.

Sarasota-Bradenton’s gains raised the much-invited prospect that at least a part of Southwest Florida might be shaking off the hangover brought on by back-to-back years of a surging real estate market.

“There’s no such thing as a national market,” said Joe Hembree, president of the Sarasota Association of Realtors. “Most of the U.S. had inclement weather this winter — especially the Northeast and Midwest. You don’t look for a new home in the middle of a snow storm.”

Owner said to be courting return to home sweet home