Low prices spur sales at Riviera high-rise

Four years ago, the Marina Grande condominium in Riviera Beach was among the first Palm Beach County condos to experience the buyers’ remorse crowd. As the market for flipping real estate died during early 2007, dozens of investors at Marina Grande scrambled to try to undo their pre-construction contracts. Now Marina Grande is finding popularity …

The Best And Worst Cities For Home Values In 2011

Poor Florida. The state that is home to Disney World, key lime pie and the Daytona 500 hasn’t had much to crow about when it comes to real estate in recent years. Sorry to break it to Sunshine Staters, but they shouldn’t be expecting a rebound anytime soon either. That’s according to Local Market Monitor …

In Lakewood Ranch, land brings growing influence | HeraldTribune.com

By wielding its ownership of 54 square miles of land, Lakewood Ranch developer Schroeder-Manatee Ranch has coaxed one project after another to its master-planned community, removed from the urban cores of Sarasota and Manatee counties. In its latest potential coup, SMR is offering up discounted land for a proposed $14.4 million complex to house the …

Big foreclosures that few knew about

Take, for instance, last year’s second- biggest foreclosure. There were no headlines when General Electric Credit Corp. took title to Serenoa Golf Club over a $4.3 million debt. While other courses have had financial difficulties and some, like those at Forest Lakes, have been well publicized, Serenoa is the only golf course in Sarasota County …

Ferreting out mortgage fraud

Attorney General Pam Bondi wisely intends to continue the work started by her predecessor to investigate foreclosure malpractice in Florida. Banks, loan servicers and their law firms like to complain that the reason for all the faulty paperwork in foreclosure cases is due to the high volume of cases. In fact, corners often were purposely …