News About Properties

Tibor Hollo, South Florida’s dean of the deal, is thriving

So you want to buy a Miami condo but are afraid prices will keep falling? Or, maybe you’re worried about losing your job or have heard those stories about how hard it is to land a condo loan.

Veteran Miami developer Tibor Hollo is offering at least one salve for would-be buyer anxiety: A no-income, no-assets, no questions-asked loan for 75 percent of a unit’s value, plus a money-back guarantee.

If potential buyers no longer want the condo in three years, he’ll release them from their mortgages and refund their down payments. For investors, he’ll take it up a notch — leasing a unit back, managing it and covering all carrying costs, while guaranteeing a 3 percent return on investment.

The fine print: Only units in Hollo’s Opera Tower near Miami’s performing arts center qualify for the interest-only loans, which come due in five years. He’s also not budging on unit prices, which average out to just under $400,000.

Some deadbeat landlords must forfeit rents to condo associations

Each month, Judd Tyler, the president of his townhome association, discovers his community doesn’t have enough money to pay all of its bills.

So the townhome board took action. It is among the first in the area to obtain a court order to force delinquent landlords to turn over rent payments to them.

“The problem is these investors have given up hope on keeping their unit,” Tyler said of Charleston Place Townhomes, near the Westchase area. “They just wait to lose the home in foreclosure. Meanwhile, their tenant is using all of these amenities, and the rest of us have to pay for it.”

The court order, signed late last month, grants what’s called a blanket receivership. It requires many of the tenants to pay their rent to a court-approved, third-party receiver instead of the landlord. In fact, it’s against the law for the landlord to collect rent until all past-due fees and legal costs are paid.

A sign of recovery: bidding wars for houses [South Florida]

After a recession-driven hibernation, competitive bidding for homes is back in Southwest Florida.

But before anyone cracks open the bubbly, take note: The phenomenon — by far — remains the exception, not the rule.

Still, experts take the news as a sign that the region’s long-suffering real estate market might have found some footing, loosening the grip that buyers have enjoyed and perhaps heralding better days ahead.

Because real estate is such a big part of Southwest Florida’s economy, the return of home bidding could also be a sign that the recession — which started earlier here than nationally and reached more deeply — could be running its course.

Board’s use of reserve funds results in fine for the owners

Q: Our board willfully used funds from the reserve account without unit owner approval for other purposes. The state imposed a fine on the association and not the board. Who is responsible for such action?

R.E., Miami

A: The fine will be paid from general funds of the association or by special assessment. This means that each member will pay their share. It is said that the board is responsible for the operations and maintenance of the association. This is true, but each member is responsible to elect trustworthy and knowledgeable members to the board. In addition, each member has a responsibility to monitor the actions of the board and this means reviewing the financial reports and attending meetings. If the members are complacent and the board fails to comply with the statutes or the documents, then the members must pay for the errors of the board and any fine imposed on the association.

Downtown development: Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach officials check to see if they overbuilt in the early 2000s [South Florida]

Developers poured money and concrete into South Florida’s three county “capitals” this decade, furiously building up the downtown skylines with thousands of new residential high-rise condos and apartments.

Now that the real estate boom is over, officials in those major urban centers are asking: Did we overbuild?

Prices in the three downtowns — West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami — plummeted to bargain-basement levels. But recent surveys suggest only Miami severely overbuilt its urban center during the real estate boom. Nearly 40 percent of the condos there are empty and up for sale.

Some developers were left holding unsold condos in West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, but officials in both downtowns said they’re well-positioned to recover from the bust.

One seller ploy first-time buyers should avoid

Here’s a tactic that was used on me as a first-time home buyer: The seller is asked to pay an amount into a fund, and told he can recoup that payment by raising his selling price, which would then be paid by an unsuspecting buyer. I didn’t understand how this worked until after I had put down my earnest payment to purchase the house.

I ultimately found out it was really more of a ploy that results in the buyer paying for it twice, first in terms of a higher mortgage amount (and possibly a higher interest rate) and second in terms of higher property taxes.

What sort of things should first-time home buyers be made aware of and what sort of disclosures should the agents be required to provide to the first-time home buyers? Is this the sort of reason why such programs are only offered to first-time home buyers, because once someone been through this once, it won’t work on them again because they will know what to look for the next time?