The foreclosure crisis helped make Al Dumas and his 11-person team into one of the most productive real estate sales operations in Florida. His team and its four affiliated agents were responsible for closing 537 transactions and more than $50 million in sales volume in 2010. Though sales have slowed in 2011, thanks to the …
Category Archives: General
Florida home insurer Argus will fold
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 …
Local governments banned from restricting short-term rentals
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 …
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W South Beach’s David Edelstein’s Hangout
When he’s at his South Beach home, David Edelstein loves to lounge outdoors, under some trees in a garden decorated as if it were in Provence. But this sunny day he was hanging out by the 120-foot long swimming pool, fringed with white umbrellas and palm trees. “There’s Jamie now,” he said, as actor Jamie …
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Edzell Castle, long a jewel of Sarasota Bay
Much of Florida’s shoreline is lined with mansions, especially in Sarasota. Large homes of 8,000 square feet or larger have replaced, or taken their place alongside, smaller houses of 4,000 or 5,000 square feet — a testament to the explosion of wealth here. Any trend has to start somewhere, and in Sarasota, the mansion-building began …
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Falling condo prices in Grand Rapids draw wave of homeowners downtown
Eleven years ago, Paul Becker and Eve Rogus got married, raising their blended family of five children in a large house in East Grand Rapids. But those children grew up and moved out. And the couple, both in their 50s, no longer needed the five-bedroom Cape Cod or the maintenance that came with it. Enter …
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