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.

Mercedes Homes LLC, for nearly 30 years one of Brevard County’s most prominent home builders, is ending operations two years after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

An outside executive management team brought in by the consortium of leading creditors from the bankruptcy case recently took over operations of the Suntree-headquartered company and announced its intentions to cease operations after its contracts for new homes are satisfied, though no exact timeline was provided.

The founding Buescher family, which held most top management spots at Mercedes, has not been involved in the company since late December. They are in the process of starting a new home building company to be called Mercedes Premier Homes LLC.

via Builder moves on to a new enterprise.

Flush with cash from an oil boom and plentiful jobs, North Dakotans are snapping up homes 1,500 miles away in balmy Arizona, where prices have plunged since the real estate bubble burst.

“It boils down to the weather and taking advantage of the market,” says real estate agent Rocky Parra of HomeSmart Realty in Gilbert, Ariz., a Phoenix suburb.

He and wife Beverly, a native of Minot, N.D., have sold eight homes to North Dakotans in recent months. Parra is heading to North Dakota this month to meet with possible buyers.

via North Dakotans buy up homes in Arizona.

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.

About a five-minute walk from the Ritz-Carlton hotel in south Orange County is a town-home community that has seen its share of hard times.

Not that long ago, Whisper Lakes was collecting only about two-thirds of the association dues its owners were supposed to pay to keep the place running. Town homes that had sold for $175,000 at the peak of the homebuying frenzy five and six years ago were going for $40,000. Shrubbery was dying, and owners complained that the buildings’ quarter-century-old, hunter-green paint scheme resembled that of military barracks.

via Townhomes in Orlando: Whisper Lakes townhomes in Orlando renovated – OrlandoSentinel.com.

Condominiums, like homes, are selling at a healthy pace in Southwest Florida, but the median sales price continues to give ground — the result of more realistic sellers and a greater mix of units at the low end of the market and distressed properties.

Sales during November rose 7 percent in Sarasota-Bradenton and 19 percent in Charlotte County-North Port.

Meanwhile prices fell 16 percent to $110,000 in Sarasota-Bradenton from a year ago and 7.6 percent from just the previous month.

via Condos selling, but prices continue to fall.