The housing boom is over, but creative investors still make profits

The housing boom is over, but creative investors still make profits

Vicky Kaye is accustomed to making a double-digit annual return in the real estate market. And unlike many other area real estate investors, she’s still doing so.

“I do about two or three deals a year,” said Kaye, a licensed massage therapist who lives in Pompano Beach.

Kaye is a private lender who provides short-term financing for other real estate investors. She’s been investing that way for five years and making 12 to 14 percent interest on each deal, as well as the return of her principal in less than a year.

Riviera’s titanic waterfront revamp faces sinking feeling [South Florida]

Riviera’s titanic waterfront revamp faces sinking feeling [South Florida]

For Bob Healey, the city’s $2.4 billion waterfront redevelopment plan is like a yacht stalled at sea.

The New Jersey yachtmaker should know. His company, Viking Inlet Harbor Properties, was picked a year ago this week to turn 400 acres of blight into a dazzling waterfront.

The decision was heralded as the catalyst to change the economic landscape of a beleaguered city too often associated only with crime and poverty. The celebration has been short-lived. The only tangible sign of International Harbor Village is the Riviera Beach Maritime Academy, a Viking-sponsored charter school designed to teach students about the marine industry.

Complex owners’ dilemma: Condos or apartments? [South Florida]

Complex owners’ dilemma: Condos or apartments? [South Florida]

With the real estate market showing little signs of revival, some condo converters are facing this dilemma: Should I keep trying to sell these units as condos, or just give up and go back to apartments?

The owner of the 450-unit Mizner Court at Broken Sound will wait until December to make that decision.

Owner Skip Stoltz says he’s lucky he has a choice. Unlike some developers, he has waited to file documents classifying the former Coral Harbor apartment complex as a condo. Closings haven’t yet taken place on some 80 contracts, either.

Moving here? Good luck finding an apartment [Central Florida]

Moving here? Good luck finding an apartment [Central Florida]

When Cynthia Valentin and her three children moved from Reading, Pa., to Orlando, she needed two things quickly: a place to live and a job.

With a 3.2 percent unemployment rate, the job was a snap. But finding an apartment took several frustrating weeks.

“Everything was too expensive or wouldn’t be available for three or four months,” she said.

An Investors’ Dream or Just a Mirage? [Southern California]

An Investors’ Dream or Just a Mirage? [Southern California]

Ashraf Fahim insists he is not a gambler. Yet when he decided to begin betting on real estate, he headed straight to the high-stakes table in California’s remote desert.

Two years ago, as some experts cautioned that soaring housing prices were creating a market bubble, the Egyptian-born pediatrician borrowed about $400,000 against his Riverside home and began buying dirt — dirt-cheap.

Fahim concentrated his purchases on an area he felt was undiscovered, a skull-scorching stretch of sagebrush and farmland 20 minutes east of Barstow where, until recently, land could languish on the market for years until it sold.

St. Joe to stop building houses [South Florida]

St. Joe to stop building houses [South Florida]

Evidence is mounting that the downturn in Florida’s real estate market may be broader than experts had expected.

St. Joe Co., the largest private landowner in Florida, is exiting the homebuilding business in the state. Giant homebuilder Lennar Corp. of Miami is reducing its third-quarter earnings estimates. And the National Association of Realtors predicted home sales will be lower than projected throughout the remainder of the year.

Jacksonville-based St. Joe, which once banked its fortunes on timber and paper, transformed itself into a “place-maker” about a decade ago. In 1997, it acquired homebuilding expertise with its purchase of Arvida, which had been building residential communities throughout the Southeast.