Real estate agents see marked improvement

Real estate agents see marked improvement

Across Southwest Florida, real estate agents are reporting sales, showing activity and buyer interest that suggests the region could be emerging from its real estate doldrums.

In January, Michael Saunders & Co.’s call center received 3,375 serious inquiries, “which matches almost exactly the call activity at the height of the boom,” said spokesman Tom Heatherman.

In January 2006, the center received only 2,310 calls.

Saunders closed on 134 units in October, but last month, it closed on 178.

Marco’s house of shame and blame

Marco’s house of shame and blame

It is said that when bulldozers leveled the house at 1791 Waterfall Court, a foot-long snake slithered from the rubble and a small mischief of rats scurried off the property.

Jan Wollemann’s house, or the house in which Jan Wollemann lived, is no more.

A Naples lawyer sold his interest in the Marco Island home because it became a “big headache.” A Boca Raton businessman says he did everything in his power to help. A Marco Island man, who now holds the title and authorized the bulldozing, isn’t sure what he will do with the property.

And Wollemann, a 63-year-old suffering from Parkinson’s disease, sits alone in an East Naples hotel room with only a gym bag of ragtag clothes and eight bottles of pills left in his name.

Clough: Lawsuits build on canceled condos [South Florida]

Clough: Lawsuits build on canceled condos [South Florida]

Buyers of canceled condo projects in downtown West Palm Beach are becoming increasingly angry – and frantic – over unrefunded deposits on units, and unfulfilled contracts.

Dozens of buyers fell for sales pitches promising gleaming high-rises. Instead they wound up with fading sales brochures. Most upsetting: Some buyers are having trouble getting all their deposit money back. That’s because some of their money was released to developers for construction, even though the condos weren’t built.

While some buyers are resigned to lessons learned, others are fighting back by filing lawsuits against the developers who they say failed to deliver. In the past two months alone, half a dozen lawsuits have been launched.

Towers developer defaults on loan [Southern California]

Towers developer defaults on loan [Southern California]

Developer John Saca Wednesday said he has defaulted on a $22 million loan he used to buy the downtown land where he broke ground last year for two 53-story condominium and hotel towers.

The default — the first step in a foreclosure — doesn’t necessarily mean the development is dead. Rather, it’s a public exposure of the months-long private struggle between Saca and his equity partner in the Towers, the giant California Public Employees’ Retirement System — CalPERS.

Construction on the prominent site at Third Street and Capitol Mall stopped in January, leaving a hole in the ground, studded with piles, a few blocks down from the Capitol.

Coast Bank will continue Tringali tract foreclosure [South Florida]

Coast Bank will continue Tringali tract foreclosure [South Florida]

Coast Bank of Florida passed on the chance to unload a property for less than a third of what the bank loaned on it.

So the bank’s foreclosure against developer Michael Tringali will continue.

An auction Thursday evening generated just two bids for the 253-acre tract near Myakka City, for which Coast loaned $4.94 million to Tringali in August 2005.

Tringali then defaulted on the loan, so Coast filed suit to get its money.

Investors see fast-bucks plan unravel

Investors see fast-bucks plan unravel

Investment firm helped many join CCI home-building deal

Hundreds turned out to a Long Island Marriott Hotel to hear one of several presentations that led many northeastern investors into perhaps the biggest financial catastrophe of their lives.

So many people showed up for the monthly meeting of the Long Island Real Estate Investors Association that staff at the Melville, N.Y., hotel had to remove two partition panels to convert the banquet room into a ballroom.

As the historic 2003-05 Florida real estate boom peaked, Seashore Resorts LLC, a South Carolina-based real estate investment firm, and its agents regaled investors with stories about Southwest Florida’s magical climate, its low unemployment, its booming demographics and most of all, the potential for 30 percent annual returns on residential real estate.