Mobile-home residents lack options

Mobile-home residents lack options

Florida’s mobile-home owners face tough decisions as they contend with storms, scarce insurance coverage and a healthy real estate market.

The 62-year-old Pinellas County retiree has lived in the same 180-acre mobile-home park for 15 years. Recently he received a six-month eviction notice — his park closes in November to make way for a new condo village.

”You got elderly people here that are really stressed out to the gills,” he said. “We have heart attacks here on a daily basis. Where are you going to put these people? They’re elderly, they’re veterans, they’re on Social Security. I don’t know what we’re going to do with them.”

Viera East residents fighting frustration [South Florida]

Viera East residents fighting frustration [South Florida]

To Art and Merle Gelles, their Collingtree neighborhood is as close as you can get to paradise on Earth.

They live off the second hole of the Viera East Golf Club and play about four times a week.

“It’s so beautiful I feel like I’m on vacation continuously,” Merle Gelles said minutes before teeing off on a recent morning.

But life isn’t all putting greens and fairways here at Viera East, where about 8,000 people live surrounding an 18-hole golf course on almost 3,000 acres east of Interstate 95 between Wickham Road and Barnes Boulevard.

Young buyers find real estate to call their own – The Olympian – Olympia, Washington

Young buyers find real estate to call their own – The Olympian – Olympia, Washington

Besides their college graduation, their first “real” job and their first new car, we can add another common milestone to the list for young single adults: buying a home.

More adults younger than 30 are entering the real-estate market, and many are doing it at ages uncommon a decade ago. And buyers are getting still younger as Generation Y joins in.

Fantasyland or real town? [Central Florida]

Fantasyland or real town?

It was built to be a suburban utopia, conceived and run by Disney. A decade later, a lot of the magic is still there, but some reality has set in and the people who live there want to be their own town.

Over the years, that town has grown from 350 to 10,000. They have christened a new hospital, a new high school and, soon, the town’s first Starbucks. Despite the growth, many agree that Celebration has retained the very qualities that drew them here: crime-free neighborhoods, pedestrian-friendly streets and a near-universal desire to know one’s neighbors.

There’s one thing that Celebration doesn’t have, not yet, anyway: democracy.

City residents feeling home pinch [North Florida]

City residents feeling home pinch [North Florida]

Jeremy Crane is devoted to the American dream of owning a home. Crane, 22, single and living in Gainesville, said he has bounced with family members from apartment to apartment. Now out on his own, he hopes to buy a house before he marries.

“All my life, I’ve wanted to own my own home,” Crane said recently.

But looking for one means looking outside the city limits. Houses in Gainesville that fit Crane’s annual income of about $23,000 a year are scarce. His situation is common across the Queen City.