News About Properties

When the office building at 250 Royal Palm Way came on the market in a 2010 foreclosure sale, Anthony DiTommaso and Rusty Warren, co-CEOs of Ivy Equities, saw an opportunity they couldn’t pass up.

The Greenwich, Conn.-based executives, whose firm Ivy Realty, is headquartered in Montvale, N.J., entered a market they had set their sights on with the $7 million purchase of the property. DiTommaso, 47, and Warren, 44, have more than 9 million square feet of commercial real estate in the New York Metropolitan area and along the southern part of the Northeast Corridor in their portfolio, but after the economic downturn began to investigate investment in southeastern Florida.

They were convinced that commercial real estate in the region represented good value, DiTommaso said. “We believe it will be bouncing back relatively soon.”

via New owners DiTommaso, Warren complete 250 Royal Palm Way renovation.

When Donald Soffer first visited a patch of swampy wetlands just south of the border between Dade and Broward counties, his original intent was simply to build a shopping mall.

But after seeing the land, the idea came to him for an upscale community created around an expansive golf course and country club, a vision he sketched on a cocktail napkin.

It is no exaggeration to say that Soffer’s sketch gave birth to Aventura, one of the most affluent municipalities in Florida. “Without him, there would not be a City of Aventura,” former mayor Jeff Perlow declares.

via Family & Fortune.

An unexpected increase in Chinese property buyers is moving Singapore’s real-estate market, in the latest sign of the effects of Chinese money elsewhere in Asia.

For years, Indonesians and Malaysians were the dominant foreign property buyers in Singapore, a rich Southeast Asian city-state that is widely regarded as one of the safest places in Asia to park capital, thanks to its stable political environment and predictable laws.

Over the past year or so, though, Chinese investors have leapfrogged those and other buyers to become the biggest foreign source of property sales, accounting for 32% of foreign buyers in the first half of 2011, up from just 8% in 2007. Some of the latest residential sales exceeded five million Singapore dollars US$3.8 million, according to agents, including what local media reports say was the S$36 million purchase of a 15,000-square-foot bungalow plot in the city’s posh Sentosa Cove.

via Chinese Property Buyers Boost Role in Singapore.

A lender-owned beachfront property in Jupiter just sold to a foreign investor for $9.75 million, or $812,500 per unit. 3000 Ocean Dr., a 12-unit condo, was completed in 2010 at a cost of $18 million.CBRE marketed the property for sale on behalf of the lender, West Suburban Bank, after it foreclosed on the property in April 2011.

The buyer, a private investor out of Bahrain, purchased the asset under the capital group MHS Real Estate Capital, LLC. CBRE senior vice president Richard Tarquinio, vice chairman Robert Given and director of operations Calum Weaver, worked together to broker the deal.“We’ve done more than 30 of these fractured deals,” Weaver tells GlobeSt.com. “This one really was different because of the quality, the location and the large-sized units. From a price per unit standpoint, 3000 Ocean Dr. has to be among the highest that we’ve seen out there.”

via Bahrain Buyer Grabs Lender-Owned Condo for Half Price.

Meg McKennon’s workload has surged since the Seattle real estate agent switched to managing residential properties. Now she gets paid for finding tenants instead of buyers – an easier task as rentals soar.

“In the past two months, my business probably came close to tripling,” said McKennon, who started management company Dwellings Seattle Real Estate in 2010 after selling houses for 15 years.

When a couple moved out of a two-bedroom house managed by McKennon in August, before the lease was up, she increased the monthly rent by $200 to $1,900 – and still had her pick of applicants. “I could have rented it 10 times over,” she said.

via Property managers busy as rental market surges.

Sellers of South Florida condominiums, buffeted by the devastating housing downturn, are bracing for another blow caused by prospective buyers’ problems getting mortgages.

Buyers who want loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration are being shut out of buildings that no longer qualify for FHA financing. That likely will slow the region’s recovering condo market and keep prices depressed in buildings not approved for FHA loans, analysts say.

Meanwhiile, owners in those buildings are sometimes stuck paying more in association fees to compensate for the unsold, often vacant units.

via Condos: Buyers needing FHA loans shut out of buildings – South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com.