News About Properties

Separated by a Common Tongue: Foreclosures Trap Translators in Middle

For years, interpreter Yu Ching ended many calls by saying, “Congratulations. You have been approved,” as she helped credit-card companies and mortgage lenders reach a growing share of the Mandarin-speaking market in the U.S.

But on a recent morning, the call-center interpreter didn’t have the last word. “You’re sending me off a cliff,” shrieked a woman, after Ms. Ching relayed a bank official’s refusal to let the woman avert foreclosure by selling her house for less than the value of her mortgage.

Ms. Ching, and legions like her, occupy unique listening posts in a changing economy. During boom times, these telephone-based interpreters enabled financial companies to push loans, mortgages and cheap credit to growing communities of Asian and Latin American immigrants. Now, as many of those bets have gone bad, interpreters are busier than ever helping the same banks try to coll

ect.

Dade Bulk Condo Opportunities Abound

Bulk purchases in the local residential condominium market, where inventory is believed to have ballooned to 40,000 units, have been few and far between thus far in 2009. However, plenty of opportunities to buy blocks of units exist that many investors simply aren’t aware of yet.

More than 200 condo and townhome projects are in Miami-Dade County with availability of at least 20 units, according to Miami-based CondoReports.com. The report draws a distinction between units built through 2007, before the perceived condo market crash, and those closing over the past 15 months.

The exact number of units in each block is a moving target because projects built in 2008 and this year’s first quarter are still closing out existing sales contracts, says Adam Cappel, CondoReports president. It is safe to assume that nearly every building that began closing last year will have a meaningful block of inventory remaining, he says.