News About Properties

Frisco soldier who lost house to foreclosure over homeowners dues gets it back

The Frisco soldier and his family who lost their home to foreclosure while he was serving in Iraq will get the house back.

Army National Guard Capt. Michael Clauer and his wife, May, lost their $315,000 southwest Frisco home in May 2008 after falling behind on Heritage Lakes Homeowners Association dues.

The Clauers sued the association and subsequent buyers in federal court. A court-ordered settlement conference led to an agreement this week that gives the house back to the Clauers.

A gag order prevents those involved from sharing details. But the bottom line is that the Clauers once again will own the home in the Heritage Lakes subdivision.

Closed Seville Beach Hotel to get new boutique brand

The shuttered Seville Beach Hotel in Miami Beach will come back as a partnership between hip hotelier Ian Schrager and Marriott.

The Miami Beach location, at 2901 Collins Ave., becomes just the second announced U.S. location under the boutique Edition brand. The first is scheduled to open this fall in Waikiki.

Marriott spokesman John Wolf said the South Florida hotel, which sits on nearly three acres of beachfront property, is expected to open in three years after significant renovations.

The hotel company does not expect to be a long-term owner, CFO Carl Berquist said Thursday in a conference call for investors.

Some HOAs sue or foreclose to collect dues

When Helen Burgess fell behind on her bills after being diagnosed with cancer, she was able to work out payment plans on her mortgage, car note, credit card and tax obligations to the Internal Revenue Service.

Her neighbors weren’t so accommodating.

Because Burgess was late on her condo fees, the Magnolia Lane Condominium Association cut off her water soon after she returned home from surgery. That was June 27, 2009.

Since then, Burgess has been hauling water from her niece’s house 10 miles away. The condo group also tried in vain to garnishee the Marietta woman’s pay to collect the dues it’s owed, which, including attorneys’ fees, now totals more than $5,000. Most recently, it banned Burgess or her guests from using the clubhouse and other facilities in the 76-unit Marietta community.

Bulk Condo Sales Clear Supply—at a Cost

The financial clouds hovering over the Monteverde condominium development in Boynton Beach, Fla., were driven away in late spring when an investor bought 118 of the project’s 219 units in a “bulk sale,” a popular method of moving large numbers of condos in one transaction.

But Dan Berwitz, a sales representative for a computer company who paid $204,000 for a unit in the Monteverde in 2007, has mixed feelings about the deal. He is pleased that the sale will bring financial stability to his building, but he isn’t happy that the bulk-sale buyer plans to sell the units far below what he paid, in some cases as low as $100,000. “But unfortunately, right now, there’s nothing we can do,” he said.

In Florida, one of the nation’s hardest-hit housing markets, prices of single-family homes and condos have been falling for the past three years due to rising foreclosures, an abundance of supply and tight credit conditions.

While there are signs that prices for homes are starting to stabilize in some Florida cities, that may not be the case for condos due in part to bulk sales such as the Monteverde transaction, which could put more downward pressure on prices.

Rich have higher home default rates

The well-off are losing their master suites and saying goodbye to their wine cellars.

The housing slump that began among the working class in remote subdivisions and progressed to the suburban middle class is striking the upper class in privileged enclaves like this one in Silicon Valley.

Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population.

More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars is seriously delinquent, according to data compiled for The New York Times by the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic. By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lenders. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent.

Updated: Downtown Sarasota condo tower evacuated

City officials went door to door in Dolphin Towers this morning, checking to make sure residents had evacuated the building deemed unsafe Wednesday.

Just before the 11 a.m. evacuation deadline, the last residents carried what possessions they could out of the 15-story building. Some shed tears, but most are trying to make the best of a situation they cannot control - going on a trip or visiting relatives - said building supervisors.

An engineering firm and the city still do not know today why the support structure of the 117-unit building has shifted, discovered June 24 when walls buckled and a cracked formed in a fourth-floor unit.

The city ordered the building evacuated until the tower’s support structure can be stabilized, meaning residents could be displaced anywhere from a few days to several months.