News about properties and real estate
Try-Mor residents in limbo [South Florida]
For almost a year, Carol Kuebler has lived with the uncertainty that has become all too familiar for those living in mobile home parks throughout Florida.
It’s the unsettling question, “Who’s going to own our park tomorrow?”
But for Kuebler, that uncertainty now carries a sense of urgency.
Gifting real estate may escape taxation
DEAR BOB: My son and his wife live in a free-and-clear house I own. He pays utilities and maintains the property. He proposes I add both their names to the title so that in 24 months we can sell the property and he would then purchase in his name only a more expensive home. My son says no tax will be due on such a sale under that $500,000 tax exemption rule you often discuss and the sale isn’t even reportable to the Internal Revenue Service. I realize I would be passing on the value of the home to him but I am not confident of the tax situation. Is he correct? –James S.
DEAR JAMES: When you gift the house to your son and his wife, that event requires you to file a federal gift tax return. However, no gift tax will be due if your total lifetime gifts exceeding the annual $12,000 per gift per donee exemption are not more than $1 million.
Foreclosure filings on Florida homes leap
Florida foreclosure filings jumped by 6 percent from April to May, according to a study by RealtyTrac Inc., an online data concern. That’s one new filing for every 821 Florida households.
By contrast, national foreclosure filings rose by less than 2 percent, averaging about one new filing for every 1,247 U.S. households.
The numbers for St. Lucie County were even more grim. One of every 719 households there was the subject of a foreclosure filing in May, reported Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac. And in Palm Beach County last month, RealtyTrac found, one of every 561 households faced a new foreclosure action — almost double the national average.
Lending a Hand: Many benefits of interest-only mortgages
There has been way too much negative press over mortgages that have the option to pay just the interest each month. In the first place, the very term “interest-only” is a misnomer. The implication is that such borrowers can only pay the interest that is due each month when in fact they can pay whatever amount they want as long as at least the interest on the principal is paid.
For example, if we take a $500,000 mortgage at a rate of 7 percent, the monthly interest payment would be the annual interest — $35,000 — divided by 12 for a total of $2,917 per month.
Businesses facing homeowners’ woes
Recent storms cause premiums to soar
Al Paraldi got a nasty shock a few weeks ago — because of the skyrocketing price of business insurance, the rent for his Dollar Boulevard store in Cape Coral was going up by about $100 a month.
He’s one of many tenants, landlords and property managers reeling as insurance companies drop policies, pull out of the Florida market altogether, or sharply increase their premiums for coverage that protects against calamities such as fires and/or wind damage from hurricanes.
Shelly McKnight and her husband, Matthew Haynes, seemed to have a good life in the Los Feliz Hills. They owned a home in a chic area, had jobs in the film industry and traveled the world on vacations.
But both felt something was missing. When a motorcycle trip in 2002 to look at property took them north into Tulare County, they discovered Springville, population 1,109, a former sawmill town built on the Tule River, and knew they had found what they were looking for: a simpler, more rural life.