News About Properties

Kern farmland has become one of the county’s hottest investments, due in part to broadly higher commodity prices and growing demand for land with vested water rights.People in the industry say large farming companies are taking advantage of low interest rates and bidding against institutional investors with few other attractive options for earning income.While some wonder whether the market has the attributes of a real estate bubble, others say rising ag land prices are rooted in long-term supply and demand projections. They note that farmers are driving the market more than people outside the industry are.

via Farmers, outside investors bid up local ag land.

Osprey Cove, a condominium in Estero, was dealing with a wave of foreclosures that cut off maintenance fees from many of its units.

The community’s property manager, Hayden & Associates, had to deal with “huge delinquencies” and traditional ways of dealing with them weren’t promising, Ken Hayden said.

“You throw them in the collections meat grinder with an attorney and I just don’t think the legal profession was prepared for it or adequately staffed for it,” he said. "We set out to find an alternative way.”

via Stressed condos find help .

South Florida is about to go from condo bust to apartment boom.Developers are set to kick off a new round of housing construction with plans to build more than 4,000 rental apartments. Five years have passed since the collapse of the housing market brought an end to the condo construction craze that swept the region.Two high-rises are proposed in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Other projects being pitched include a cluster of towers with almost 400 apartments on Young Circle in Hollywood and a sprawling complex with almost the same number of units at the old Levitz shopping center in Boca Raton.

via Apartment construction set to sweep Broward and Palm Beach counties.

The market for luxury goods is in full-fledged revival mode, and that includes high-end city real estate — apartments and townhouses in the $5 million-plus range. After plunging 30% from peak to trough, luxury-home prices in many big urban markets are back on the rise. Unit sales in Manhattan, Miami and San Francisco are up as much as 50% since 2009, as new buyers have come into the market from China, India, Russia and Brazil. Prices are up 15% or more.

"Buyers at every price point smell value and, at the high end, they are in a position to do something about it," says Brian K. Lewis, executive vice president of Halstead Properties in New York.

Some sellers are even making money. Scott Bommer, founder of the hedge fund SAB Capital, couldn’t have bought his $28.5 million 5,800 square-foot apartment on the 29th floor New York’s Ritz-Carlton Tower on New York’s Central Park South at a less propitious time: July 2008. He relisted the apartment four months later at $35 million, but not surprisingly found no takers. In late August, he finally closed a sale for $30 million, according to Leighton Candler, senior vice president at the Corcoran Group. Bommer declined to comment.

via Urban Luxury Homes Are Making a Comeback.

Peter Flotz believes in bringing the personal touch to business.

It’s not unheard of him, for instance, to walk into meetings for multi-million dollar development projects bearing a box of his mother’s cookies.

That personal touch has helped him forge successful partnerships, he says, but has also hurt as he has sometimes let his heart overrule his head.

via Big hearted developer has big plans for Melbourne skyline.

This is going to be exciting! There is nothing more exciting than talking about numbers, budgets and statistics to get everyone hanging on the edge of their seats … or the abyss to boredom. End sarcasm here.

One of the more consistent questions asked by real estate consumers is, what exactly is included in the fees and what exactly is the maintenance fee?

via Chris Griffith: Making sense of condo maintenance fees.