News About Properties

A vacant lakefront lot near Dolphin Road at 1348 N. Lake Way has sold for about $5.17 million, according to a warranty deed recorded Monday by the Palm Beach County Clerk’s office.

With 156 feet of frontage on the Intracoastal Waterway, the lot is 253 deep and lies several blocks south of the island’s northern tip.

Broker Christian Angle of Christian Angle Real Estate had listed the property at $7.495 million for its owner, the TAJA Realty Trust. Patrick Carney, chairman and CEO of Claremont Cos. in Bridgewater, Mass., is listed in state business records as manager of the limited liability company that bought the property. Claremont is a real estate investment, development and asset-management firm.

via Vacant North Lake Way lot with Intracoastal frontage sells for $5.17 million.

Pat Neal is an oddity among Florida developers: He still builds and sells lots of new homes. The financial crisis that shattered many of his competitors only slowed Neal. His edge? He paid cash for land before the boom drove up prices. “I didn’t owe anybody any money,” said Neal, whose Neal Communities builds mostly in the Lakewood Ranch area east of Interstate 75 in Manatee and Sarasota counties. “I don’t like to take on debt and work hard to buy at the right price.”

Neal Communities’ housing starts peaked in 2005 at 386, fell to 121 in 2007 and should hit 397 this year. Neal expects to exceed 500 in 2012.

Earlier boom-and-bust cycles taught Neal a lesson in changing to meet the times. In postbust Florida, that meant building homes that are smaller, less expensive to build and thus more affordable.

via Developer Pat Neal made the best of the real estate bust.

The Courtyard by Marriott hotel next to Daytona Beach International Airport is going up for auction.

Mortgage holder MTGLQ Investors L.P. of Irving, Texas, won a $10 million foreclosure judgment in April against D&B of Daytona Inc. a St. Petersburg-based company that — as Oceanside One Ltd. — owned the hotel.

The foreclosure auction will take place June 17 at the circuit courthouse in DeLand. The tax-assessed value for the hotel building is $3.23 million, according to the Volusia County property appraiser website.

via Daytona airport hotel to be put up for auction.

Clad in jeans and cowboy boots, musician John “JB” Bell reclined in a green fabric and metal chair on a Saturday morning, surrounded by 16 computers sitting on shelves about a foot from the ceiling. The computer screens glowed blue behind multicolored static, generating so much heat air-conditioning was needed to cool the room.

Mr. Bell, 49, said he spends a few hours every night and day he’s home in this "energy room," working on lyrics, reading, thinking or sleeping. He says the energy generated by the computers creates an “uplifting vibe very similar to the feeling when the band improvises into new territory, and the audience seems to be right there alongside you." His wife Laura, 48, said, "We joke it’s the new way of catching a buzz.”

The energy room is just one of the alternative treatments at the home of Mr. Bell, who for more than two decades has been the lead singer and guitarist for Southern rock jam band Widespread Panic. For about half the year Mr. Bell is on the road, playing drawn-out concerts and jamming late into the night. It’s a frenetic life, one he seeks to balance at his 1912 white Colonial that he’s also turned into a holistic wellness center in a tiny mountain town.

via The Georgia Home of Widespread Panic Lead Singer and Guitarist John ‘JB’ Bell.

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 with Thomas Martin Worcester, a retired Cincinnati wire goods manufacturer, and his wife, Davidella (Davie) “Dido” Lindsay Worcester. They are the first developers of Bird Key, an island off downtown Sarasota that has many large homes now. Then, it had but one — and the Worcesters built it.

via Edzell Castle, long a jewel of Sarasota Bay

Boxing promoter Don King has relisted his more than three-acre oceanfront property in Manalapan, Fla., south of Palm Beach, for $20 million. The gated estate, which contains two homes, was originally offered in early 2009 for $27.5 million. Mr. King took it off the market last summer.

The larger of the two homes has nine bedrooms and nearly 18,000 square feet of living space. It’s built around a coquina stone courtyard with waterfalls and ponds. The smaller five-bedroom home has about 6,800 square feet, an outdoor cabana with a kitchen and an ice-cream parlor. There are two swimming pools and a replica of the Statue of Liberty in the yard. The property includes 300 feet of ocean and Intracoastal Waterway frontage.

Mr. King, 79, has represented clients like Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson. He purchased the larger house in 1999 for $7.8 million; he paid $6.5 million for the other house the same year. Mr. King’s wife, Henrietta, passed away in December at age 87.

via Real Estate News About Don King, Mel Gibson and the ‘Home Alone’ House | Private Properties.