Lagging economy hits Palm Beach as homes languish a little longer on market [South Florida]

Lagging economy hits Palm Beach as homes languish a little longer on market

Palm Beach has enjoyed a hearty share of eye-popping home sales figures this year, including closings of $77.5 million and $95 million.

And according to a fall 2008 residential market report from Brown Harris Stevens, those heavyweight figures have thrust the average price for Palm Beach single-family homes up 80 percent between April and September compared with the same period last year.

But like other luxury home markets across the country, Palm Beach has also seen an increase in the average number of days single-family homes sit on the market. The Brown Harris Stevens report indicates an 8 percent increase from 171 to 184 days between April and September compared with last year.

That’s well above the average number of days on market for single-family homes within luxury ZIP codes across the country. According to a Nov. 16 report from the Institute for Luxury Home Marketing in Dallas, the average among 31 major U.S. metro areas is 137 days. That’s up from 120 in September and about 110 in January.

Real-estate investment firm fights to stay afloat [Pheonix Arizona]

Real-estate investment firm fights to stay afloat [Pheonix Arizona]

Last week, Phoenix-based real-estate investment firm Right Place Properties spent investors’ money to purchase multifamily housing units, promising a healthy return on their cash.

Then on Monday, the company and its designated broker, Red Door Commercial, shut down their Web sites, disconnected the phones, laid off the bulk of their employees and told investors and others that their money was all but gone.

Company officials say they were blindsided by rapid property-value declines in October and a lending-capital freeze that made it impossible to continue executing their business plan of buying run-down apartment buildings, renovating them and selling the units as condominiums.

“It’s true that through last week we were continuing to close escrows,” Right Place principal owner Earl Ricker said Thursday. “It really didn’t sink in until the weekend that continuing operations would put our ability to manage our existing properties in jeopardy.”

Short Sale vs. Foreclosure

Short Sale vs. Foreclosure

I am in default on 12 jointly-owned properties that I am trying to liquidate as part of a divorce. All of my properties are currently worth less than the mortgage balances, due to the tough real estate market. I am aware that I will likely be taxed for the amount of the mortgage I had that is not satisfied by any particular short sale. It seems that this would not be the case if the house is foreclosed on, or becomes bank-owned.

This almost encourages homeowners to allow foreclosure, rather than to participate in helping to sell the property (when there is no equity left), because there is not “an amount forgiven” to be taxed on. I recognize that the benefit of short-sale is to lessen the effect on one’s credit report, but if a homeowner is already missing payments, how much worse will a foreclosure look?

A. Although you own an unusual number of homes, your dilemma in trying to choose between a short sale and a foreclosure is, sadly, not at all unusual these days. So I asked Craig Watts, public affairs manager of Fair Isaac Corporation in San Francisco, to comment on your case. Fair Isaac is the company that created the FICO score, used by lenders to assess borrowers’ creditworthiness.

Test ahead for downtown condo market [South Florida]

Test ahead for downtown condo market [South Florida]

The number of closings at downtown Miami condos has gone better than many expected, according to a new survey. But more condos will be entering the saturated market soon.

Miami’s latest building boom is creating 22,000 condominium units in the city’s urban center, more than double the number built in the past 40 years.

But the question everyone wants answered amid the real estate downturn is: How many have actually sold?

Seventy percent have found a buyer, according to a new study by condovultures.com, a real estate consultancy. But nearly a quarter of the condos — including some of the largest projects — built during the boom will be delivered over the next several months.

Sky-High Loses Altitude

Sky-High Loses Altitude

In Gerhard Andlinger’s recently listed apartment at the Time Warner Center, high above Columbus Circle, one can sit on the Louis XVI daybed and look past the Chinese screens and the Louise Nevelson sculpture at a 14-foot-high wall of windows with priceless views of the city and its sagging real estate market.

Peer sharply downward and there, just before the wide expanse of Central Park, is the limestone facade of 15 Central Park West, where 12 apartments are now on the resale market, including four whose prices were reduced in the last few weeks, according to Streeteasy.com. Of course, these are not exactly fire sales, since the owners are asking far more than they paid.

The penthouse at 15 Central Park West famously listed over the summer by Brown Harris Stevens for $80 million, or an astounding $15,163 a square foot, is now at least temporarily off the market, and its sticker may cease to shock forever as prices fall in the luxury real estate market.

The highest asking price now at 15 Central Park West is $30 million, or about $6,500 a square foot, for a seventh-floor apartment facing the park. This is just above the $6,290 per square foot paid for the most luxurious apartment in the building, a penthouse bought by Sanford I. Weill, the former chairman of Citigroup, for $42.4 million.

Scheme gives distressed properties to squatters

Scheme gives distressed properties to squatters

Law enforcement investigators in San Diego and Riverside counties have uncovered a brazen real estate scheme in which individuals are claiming ownership of distressed homes by filing official-looking grant deeds with county recorder offices.

The perpetrators then move people into the vacant homes, in some cases, by hiring a locksmith to change the locks. In one instance, a woman who tried to move into her newly purchased home of more than $800,000 in Chula Vista found a bogus grant deed taped to the window and squatters wrecking the inside.

“I was in tears,” said Christina Suggett, 37, an insurance company executive.

Suggett finally was able to reclaim her house with the help of the bank that had foreclosed on the previous owner.