News About Properties

After experiencing one of the worst housing market crises, Miami is making a strong comeback — above other major cities in the US — fueled by international investors buying local real estate with cash.

   The coastal and desert regions in the US, including South Florida, are seeing significant sales activity compared to the rest of the nation, with foreign buyers representing the primary group actively scooping up homes and condos at discounted prices.

   Regions like Southern California, Tucson, Miami and Las Vegas are seeing an increase in the number of units sold, said Ron Shuffield, president of Esslinger-Wooten-Maxwell Realtors, part of HomeServices of America, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate that owns a network of 23 realty firms nationally.

via Miami residential sales recovery rockets past rest of nation.

Residents of Volusia and Flagler counties well know that in order to build wealth, they can no longer simply rely on buying a house.

That ship sailed in 2007, with the housing collapse dislodging its anchor. Financial planners say their clients — who skew to upper-middle class — have realized this and begun focusing more on building up their 401(k) retirement plans and savings.

But not before most everyone’s personal wealth plunged in the recession. Americans are less wealthy by nearly $8 trillion since 2007, according to the Federal Reserve. That huge number can boil down to major headaches for homeowners.

via Financial planners: Home no longer reliable tool to build personal wealth.

Scattered across 540 acres of San Diego County hills and ravines, the 235 opulent homes of the Bridges at Rancho Santa Fe flank a private golf course and country club with tile-roofed towers inspired by Tuscan villages.The placid panorama belies decades of bruising battles among the project’s developers. The cast includes home-building titan Lennar Corp., a bankrupt La Jolla deal maker and, in an improbable late entry, con man-turned-preacher Barry Minkow.

The dispute ultimately led to a federal criminal conviction against Minkow and a continuing investigation by the Justice Department. But it all began here, at a classic Southern California home development that promised riches for its partners but ended up exacting a high price on the key players.

via Inside a high-end real estate deal gone bad.

It took less than a week for interested buyers to home in on the two-story, five-bedroom foreclosure on Salt Water Creek Court west of Lantana.

Advertised as needing a little TLC – a pressure wash of the roof, fresh paint on the trim – the Savannah Estates home joins the ranks of Palm Beach County’s sought-after bank-owned properties, sales of which made up 31 percent of the area’s total purchases during the first part of this year.

With a list price of $316,000, a thick blanket of St. Augustine grass and a bathroom with a bidet, this home isn’t the typical foreclosure, which buyers have picked up for an average price of just $130,393.

via Bank-owned foreclosures account for a third of Palm Beach County’s 2011 home sales.

Argus Fire & Casualty Insurance Co. will cancel its roughly 9,000 home insurance policies within 45 days, as part of a deal to be taken over by the state on Tuesday.

Policyholders will have to scramble to find a new insurer during hurricane season, which started Wednesday.

Regulators have “decided that it is in the policyholder’s best interest to cancel all of its existing policies,” Argus wrote in a letter that is going out immediately to policyholders, agents and mortgage companies.

via House Keys | Sun Sentinel Blogs | Florida home insurer Argus will fold.

Gov. Rick Scott has made official a controversial new law that prohibits local governments from restricting short-term vacation rentals.

The law, signed by Scott yesterday, is one of the first of its kind in the country to enforce the rights of residential property owners who want to rent by the day or week, a practice that has grown in Florida with the downturn in the housing market as owners try to rent property they cannot sell.

Under House Bill 883, pushed through by the growing vacation-rental industry, counties and cities that do not already have rules against residential vacation rentals — defined as those that are rented for 30 days or less more than three times a year — will lose the ability to regulate them.

via Local governments banned from restricting short-term rentals.