News about properties and real estate
Orange is the only Central Florida county handling foreclosure-auction paperwork in a way that can allow sale prices to be artificially inflated, resulting in higher profits for investors while misleading new buyers and lenders. Officials on Friday were still trying to determine what was in it for the investors, who paid more documentary-stamp taxes on …
Continue reading “Orange foreclosure sales: inflated sales prices”
From Englewood to Anna Maria, changing demographics over the past decade have transformed the Southwest Florida coastline, as thousands of permanent residents fled the beach for a variety of reasons and were replaced by hordes of vacationers. According to the latest figures from last year’s census, coastal communities from northern Manatee to south Sarasota County …
Continue reading “Southwest Florida’s full-time residents are shifting inland”
As part of a new national hunt for gift tax evaders, the Internal Revenue Service has asked a federal court for permission to order a California state tax agency to hand over its computer database of everyone who transferred real estate to relatives for little or no consideration from 2005 to 2010. If granted, the …
The many woes of Florida’s housing market are well-known: hundreds of thousands of foreclosures, millions of underwater mortgages and a four-year trail of depreciating property values. Florida lawmakers, handicapped by a $3.6 billion budget shortfall, will take their best shot at solving some of the most pressing housing problems during this year’s legislative session, which …
Continue reading “Florida legislature to consider new real estate laws”
Is housing headed for a dreaded double-dip? Or are signs finally pointing to a long-awaited rally? Despite the glum statistics recently, well-heeled buyers in many markets should feel comfortable betting on the latter. Home prices nationwide in December were down more than 31% from their 2006 peak, according to the latest Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index, …
Residential and commercial real-estate owners aren’t the only ones losing their properties to foreclosure. The past few years have seen a rapid acceleration in the number of churches losing their sanctuaries because they can’t pay the mortgage. Just as homeowners borrowed too much or built too big during boom times, many churches did the same …