Building boom continues

The Beaufort Gazette: Building boom continues

County sees spike in condos

In a week, Malcolm and Susan Goodridge will start making 2,400 square feet of marshside space their own, moving into a first-floor condominium and finding ways to fill the three bedrooms and three-and-a-half bathrooms that now sit empty and dusty from construction.

Their new home, one of 25 being finished on Ribaut Island in Battery Creek, marks the beginnings of Beaufort’s condo-building boom, with developers plotting the construction of hundreds of new condos in the next two years — all near the water.

Nonprofit Market Creek Plaza offers Diamond district residents up to a 20% investment stake

Nonprofit Market Creek Plaza offers Diamond district residents up to a 20% investment stake

Neighbors of the 10-acre Market Creek Plaza in southeast San Diego are being offered a piece of the action.

The nonprofit owner of the shopping center on Euclid Avenue, just south of Market Street, has developed an investment plan that will give nearby residents up to a 20 percent stake in the enterprise – with the goal of transferring complete ownership and control within 12 years.

“We want to keep profits circulating inside the neighborhood instead of going outside,” said Ardelle Matthews, a retired schoolteacher and longtime neighborhood resident who plans to invest a “large amount” in the 5-year-old mall. “With Market Creek Plaza, we can invest in ourselves now.”

Housing could change S. Paula [Santa Paula, California]

Housing could change S. Paula [Santa Paula, California]

If Measure Y passes and the Adams Canyon development is built on the outskirts of Santa Paula, almost 500 families could move in over the next 20 years. These newcomers would be unlike almost anyone who lives in Santa Paula now.

In a word, they’d be rich.

Pinnacle Development Group, the Arizona-based company that would develop Adams Canyon, sees its market as households that earn more than $500,000 a year. Santa Paula would go from a city with Ventura County’s second-lowest median income to one with the county’s highest concentration of very high incomes.

When is a condo not a condo? [South Florida]

When is a condo not a condo? [South Florida]

Condo-hotel sales have been slow at the Penguin in South Beach. Is it real estate, or is it an investment? Owner Markus Friedli is thinking the latter.

Owner Markus Friedli says he is quite pleased with the Penguin Hotel after three years of rising room rates at the affordable South Beach getaway.

But its four months as a condo-hotel have not been as impressive: Sales are slow for the property’s 44 modest but stylish rooms.

”I thought it would be easier,” the 41-year-old hotelier said after selling seven units.

Low-cost rentals evaporate, displacing seniors, disabled

Low-cost rentals evaporate, displacing seniors, disabled

Waiting lists for homes, apartments grow as opportunities lag

Ella Gerrity moved into a $160-per-month studio apartment at Imperial Towers when Jimmy Carter was president and Titusville had about 30,000 residents.

She never dreamed that, at age 101, she’d be packing china and looking for a new apartment as her place and those around it became Bay Towers condominiums.

But like thousands of people countywide, Gerrity was forced into a home search because of Brevard County’s tight market for lower-income housing. At least 1,000 people are on local public housing waiting lists. Another 200 await Section 8 vouchers, with which they can rent apartments or privately owned homes.