News About Properties – Page 115 – News about properties and real estate

Low land prices create buzz to add county parks [Central Florida]

Low land prices create buzz to add county parks [Central Florida]

The rain clouds of the real-estate market have a silver lining for those who want more public baseball and soccer fields: cheaper land.

Orange County’s parks and recreation department has been scouting dozens of tracts 20 acres or larger across the county. The idea is to buy land at depressed prices and hold onto it until budgets allow for the development of more community parks with fields for youth sport leagues.

“Now’s the right time to buy land and bank it for later,” said parks director Matt Suedmeyer. Although Orange already has more than 90 parks, “most of them have hit capacity,” he said. “Our county is still growing.”

Real-estate agents say land prices in Central Florida are about 22 percent lower now than they were at the market’s peak in 2005 and 2006.

Mirassou Condo seeks new system to collect owners’ fees [South Florida]

Dealing with an ongoing crisis, the company that manages cash-strapped Mirassou Condominium wants to start a blanket receivership system to collect association fees from deadbeat owners.

Concerned residents and their families gathered at the Northwest Dade condominium’s clubhouse for a board meeting Monday evening. An attorney representing property managers talked about the new legal strategy the company wants to adopt to collect assessments.

As budgets continue to worsen in South Florida condo associations, Mirassou’s situation underscores the consequences communities are facing when unit owners enter foreclosure and discontinue paying association fees. Those fees normally cover flood and hazard insurance, maintenance, utilities and garbage collection.

Hotels Deliver Some ‘Jingle Mail’

‘Jingle mail” isn’t just for homeowners anymore. From San Diego to Dearborn, Mich., an increasing number of hotel owners in the U.S. market are simply walking away from money-losing properties and forfeiting them to lenders.

The rise in hotel forfeitures is the product of the worst hotel market since the early 1990s, with revenue declining by double-digit percentages. That has pushed the value of many hotels to less than the balance on their mortgages. Just like homeowners who mail their house keys back to the bank — so-called jingle mail — hotel owners see no hope in renegotiating their loans.

Distressed noncasino hotel loans now cover more than 1,000 properties with a cumulative loan value of $16.8 billion, according to Real Capital Analytics, a real-estate research company. That figure encompasses delinquencies, foreclosures, bankruptcies and restructurings of securitized mortgages in addition to loans from banks and other institutions.

Among them are a Mondrian boutique hotel in Scottsdale, Ariz.; a St. Regis resort in Dana Point, Calif.; the InterContinental Montelucia Resort & Spa in Scottsdale, and a Hyatt Regency in Dearborn — each of which is either in foreclosure or has stopped making payments on its debt. It includes the 680 hotels of the Extended Stay Inc. chain that filed for bankruptcy in June.

Real estate: South Florida business tenants benefit from troubled commercial real estate market

Venerable law firm Proskauer Rose is getting new digs. Sort of.

The 134-year-old firm, in Palm Beach County since 1977, recently announced plans to stay at One Boca Place in Boca Raton. It’ll expand into larger offices and consolidate on one floor late next year. Partner Andy Robins wouldn’t disclose terms but did say they were favorable.

“Did our lease get better? Yes,” Robins said.

Proskauer Rose is one of many South Florida businesses taking advantage of the commercial real estate market’s decline to renegotiate leases or to find better deals elsewhere.

More Sellers of Luxury Homes Turn to Auctions

Jack Warner leaned against his home bar and checked his watch before resuming his blank stare at the white tent outside his multimillion-dollar dream house, with its swimming pool and views of the Florida gulf, soon to be sold at auction.

“My whole life happens in two hours,” he said. “I feel like I am playing the part of Old Yeller,“ wondering if he will survive financially or perhaps just be put out of his misery, like the fictional dog. An auction, and having people traipse through a house in previews before bidding, smacks of desperation. But increasingly, people with multimillion-dollar homes who need to raise money are discovering they have few alternatives, as the luxury real estate market is especially moribund.

“We are seeing more people with homes that were on the market for $4 million to $7 million that are not selling and they are calling us,” said Jim Gall, president of Auction Company of America.

Short sales: The odds are against cash-strapped homeowners

Cash-strapped homeowners who owe more than their properties are worth often try to get out of trouble by selling for less than the mortgage amount and asking lenders to forgive the difference.

It sounds simple. But so-called short sales rarely are.

The deals frequently are exercises in frustration, as lenders take weeks or months to consider offers. Exasperated buyers walk away during the delays, and properties linger on the market, prolonging the housing slump and the recession.Many agents refuse to show short sale homes to clients. Real estate attorneys struggle to penetrate the bank bureaucracy, complaining that files pass from one employee to another. In some instances, lenders approve short sales, only to later reverse the decisions. Meanwhile, banks partly blame borrowers, saying they don’t provide necessary information fast enough.

“I’d rather take a herd of elephants through a quicksand bog. It’s easier,” said Edward Goldfarb, an agent in Broward and Palm Beach counties.