Are REITs beginning to run out of gas?

Are REITs beginning to run out of gas?

At a time when everyone seems to be debating the downshifting in residential real estate, some other real estate vehicles have been careening down Wall Street like a bunch of Lamborghinis in overdrive.

They’re called real estate investment trusts, or REITs (rhymes with “treats”), and they offer investors a way to get in on the property game without becoming landlords and having to answer calls to fix toilets.

These publicly traded corporations invest solely in real estate and are as diverse as the real estate world itself, with trusts specializing in apartments, offices, retail space, hotels, hospitals, self-storage, factories and even live-work lofts.

Gainesville developers upgrade their condo plans [North Florida]

Gainesville developers upgrade their condo plans [North Florida]

Gainesville developers are updating their plans to make the city taller.

Building planners for University Corners and Gainesville Greens are increasing the facilities, space and cost of their multimillion dollar projects.

University Corners announced changes in their $185-million plan late November. They told the city they would eliminate the planned underground garage, add parking on the roof deck, add another floor and increase the available living units from 400 to 490.

Though University Corners will boast one of the highest rooftops on University Avenue, downtown’s Gainesville Greens will beat it by two stories.

Pritzkers put Presidential Towers on the block [Chicago]

Pritzkers put Presidential Towers on the block [Chicago]

Complex likely to sell for $450 million or more in big payday for Pritzkers.

Eleven years after bailing out the Presidential Towers apartment complex, Chicago’s billionaire Pritzker family is selling the 2,346-unit West Loop property, which could fetch $450 million or more.

Built with public subsidies in the mid-1980s, Presidential Towers became a political embarrassment by 1990, when its developers defaulted on a $159-million, federally insured loan. Yet the apartment complex, the largest downtown by far, is poised to generate a huge payday for the Pritzkers, who saved it from foreclosure in 1995 with a $14-million cash infusion.

Learn How to Invest in Real Estate Through Your IRA

Learn How to Invest in Real Estate Through Your IRA

Imagine you could use the money in your Roth IRA to invest in a rental house.

When you sold, you’d be able to keep the proceeds without ever being taxed, and do the same thing all over again until you were stark raving rich.

Well, you can.

Even though real estate inside IRAs has been possible since they began in 1974, most people don’t know about this particular combination of asset-plus-tax avoidance.

Developers rethink plans in slow market [South Florida]

Developers rethink plans in slow market [South Florida]

The music in the residential real estate market has stopped, but the players still are changing seats.

Developers with unbuilt projects are weighing whether to sell, sit on or find some other use for their dirt.

Rodolfo Gonzalez is an owner of three prime condo sites in West Palm Beach, but Gonzalez said he is selling one site and may redo another into an office/retail complex.

Gonzalez is a member of the ownership group behind The Place Via Clematis, a 296-unit upscale condo once slated for Banyan Boulevard and Rosemary Avenue in downtown West Palm Beach. Sales started swimmingly when the project hit the market in 2004. But then the city needed a sliver of the property for a parking garage, forcing developers to redesign the project.

Sellers Struck When Prices Go Upside Down

Sellers Struck When Prices Go Upside Down

Every car dealer knows what upside down means: owing more on a car than it is worth.

George Fischer of Sarasota — like many other would-be real estate sellers across Southwest Florida and the nation — is rapidly learning that the term can also apply to a home.

Since the Fourth of July, he has been trying without luck to sell his spacious Cedar Creek home, with its elegant fireplace and hardwood floors.

He has periodically allotted himself the painful duty of slashing his own asking price.