News about properties and real estate
Messy paper trail leads to trouble with refinancing
Refinancing a mortgage four times in a year creates enough stress. Add title problems, and you can hardly bear the anxiety.
It happened to Apurva Pande and his wife, Chinmaya Misra. Both are architects in Los Angeles, and they bought a house three years ago. The house was dilapidated, which meant that they could afford it, and they could gut the interior and exercise their designing muscles.
No vacancy is a sign of the times for offices, apartments in S. Florida [South Florida]
If you’re looking for an office, apartment or warehouse, be patient. It could take awhile.
Broward and Palm Beach counties sport some of the lowest vacancies nationwide in those three real estate sectors, according to a study released this week by the National Association of Realtors.
Apartments turned into condos now a tough sell [Pheonix Arizona]
Developers are delaying or dumping plans to convert some Phoenix-area apartment complexes into condominiums.
A year after they pulled more than 7,000 apartments off the market, condo converters are finding that buyers in many areas are not interested in paying top dollar for a refurbished rental unit, particularly now that the Valley’s housing market is slowing and prices for single-family homes are beginning to drop.
Sheraton stays open for now [South Florida]
Demolition of the Sheraton Bal Harbour will wait until next year as developers shuffle their plans for a condominium and resort complex, an executive said Wednesday.
The Sheraton Bal Harbour gets a reprieve as developers hold off demolishing the resort to make way for condos. A cooling real estate market helped spark the delay.
The oceanfront resort will remain open at least through 2006, and probably into February, when the Super Bowl comes to Dolphins Stadium. And when developers replace it with the pricey new St. Regis, they will retain ownership of most of the 230 rooms instead of selling all of them off as condo-hotel units, as earlier planned.
From rubble to regal [South Florida]
‘Builders put their models somewhere in the back of the estates area … you see lots of houses fronting busy streets in West Palm Beach, for example. People don’t mind showing off their homes.’
— builder Fred Brunoli, on the choice of location for the Octavian model on Collier Boulevard near the Marco Island Yacht Club
Consciously or unwittingly, motorists have watched it rise from the rubble of a teardown to the imposing starter castle recently completed on Collier Boulevard near the Marco Island Yacht Club.
It’s the Octavian model, a 4,700 square-foot under air, two-story home with four bedrooms, four-and-a-half bathrooms and accompanying bells and whistles that justify its approximate $3.5 million value.
Hardest Part Of Buying A House Might Be The Forms
When you are finally ready to take the plunge and make an offer on a house, your real estate agent will bring out a hefty pile of papers with which to convey that offer.
If you are a first time buyer you should have each and every one of these pieces of “boilerplate” explained to you. They are routine to your agent who has probably prepared dozens if not hundreds of offers, but don’t let her blow through them. An offer is not routine to you and it is your house, your money, and your blood pressure.