News About Properties

Screws tighten on Kelly and Sarasota Bayside

Beset by bank debt and eroding property values here and abroad, Irish developer and Sarasota Quay owner Patrick Kelly is contemplating filing for bankruptcy protection.

Kelly’s dilemma marks the largest example to date of how the global economic crisis is seeping into Southwest Florida.

While such a move would be a personal blow, it is too early to tell how a bankruptcy filing would affect Sarasota Bayside, the $1 billion collection of condominium towers, office space, hotel rooms, retail and restaurants that a Kelly-led partnership unveiled in early 2004 but was unable to start.

Clearwater house flipper Mark Lepzinski gets 13 months in prison for mortgage fraud

Calling him “a good example of why we are in an economic crisis,” a federal judge on Thursday sentenced Clearwater house flipper Mark Lepzinski to 13 months in prison for lying on applications for loans he knew he couldn’t afford.

“It’s simple greed, and we’re going to see a lot more of it in this court than we should in coming years,” Judge James D. Whittemore told Lepzinski, 51. “The harm occasioned by mortgage fraud is not just economic, it is much broader than lenders simply losing money.”

Lepzinski said he made mortgage payments for years on up to 50 properties, employing many workers as he fixed up distressed properties and “added value to the community.” He said his “business plan” fell apart only when the real estate market collapsed and he was unable to afford the payments or sell the houses.

As real estate prices plunge across the country, investor Judah Hertz says he’s happy in low-key New Orleans

In the years before Hurricane Katrina, Judah Hertz made a great wager on New Orleans. The California real estate investor bought four major office buildings downtown, transforming himself almost overnight into the Central Business District’s dominant landlord.

The city’s office market took its knocks from the storm, as oil and gas companies decamped to Houston and commercial insurance rates climbed into the stratosphere, at least for a time. Yet Hertz says he remains pleased with his investments in New Orleans and other midsize cities, where real estate values have not suffered the dramatic comedown afflicting financial centers like New York, Miami and Los Angeles.

Hertz, 60, gravitates toward stable, unglamorous markets that neither ascend to great peaks nor submit to painful lows. It is a strategy that today appears downright prescient. He sold the last of his buildings in Los Angeles two years ago, as the market was peaking, and plowed the profits into smaller cities such as Columbus, Ohio; Pittsburgh; and St. Louis that have mostly weathered the cri

sis.

‘Short sales’ help Hawaii homeowners get rid of their houses to avoid bankruptcy

When Aloha Airlines shut down a year ago, Ron Verderame knew he had to escape the weight of a hefty year-old mortgage. The pilot faced a slumping real estate market and bleak job prospects, but finally, after trying for seven months to sell his Kane’ohe house, he obtained relief through a short sale.

Such sales — where a home is sold for less than a seller’s mortgage and the deficiency is forgiven — are helping dramatically higher numbers of financially struggling homeowners avoid credit-wrecking foreclosure.

The transactions are also providing good deals for buyers, are helping lenders minimize loan losses and are reducing the number of vacant foreclosed homes that can negatively affect neighborhoods.

A short while ago, these deals alternatively known as preforeclosure sales were virtually unheard of in Hawai’i's moderately stable housing market. But not now.

Foreclosure Program Moves Forward

With hundreds of homes currently in foreclosure in Hernando County, it didn’t take much impetus for county commissioners to green-light a program designed to help alleviate the situation.

The board voted unanimously Tuesday to move forward with a Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) that allows the county to access federal money that would help people, especially in areas of the county most affected, to move into foreclosed homes.

The NSP is part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, which allocated $541 million to Florida.

Of that, Hernando County is expected to receive $4.3 million.

Condos forced to revert to apartments to survive [North Florida]

When a developer converts a building into condominiums, it’s taken as a sign of prosperity and success.

And when the wheels fall off the real estate market and condominiums languish back into apartments, it’s the opposite.

Those condominiums are “fractured.” In Jacksonville, more condominium owners are finding that when sales run out of steam in new condominium complexes, developers rent out adjacent units as apartments to pay the bills.

“If you bought a condominium in a development that’s yet to be completed, you are in a bad position. It’s just the times,” said Ray Rodriguez, owner of the Real Estate Strategy Center of North Florida. “Nobody’s going to buy a condominium when half the units are rentals. The resale values have been shot.”