News about properties and real estate
Developers will be allowed to build condos (miami)
The Aventura Commission will allow the developers of Lincoln Pointe Condominiums to construct a building with 460 units.
Despite an advertising glitch that forced the Aventura City Commission to push the meeting back a day, it agreed to exempt the developers of Lincoln Pointe Condominiums from the city’s temporary building moratorium.
New Web database lists values of homes
Could Web site do real estate agents’ job?
After months of intense speculation within the real-estate industry, supersecretive Zillow.com announced Wednesday it was rolling out a Web feature that eventually will allow anyone nearly anywhere in the nation to accurately calculate the worth of their home or almost any home they choose.
Seattle-based Zillow is the brainchild of Rich Barton, the former Microsoft executive who created Expedia in 1994. It revolutionized the travel industry by transforming it from a service-oriented business into a self-service business. Expedia brought in $1.6 billion in revenue for the nine months ended Sept. 30.
A Florida City Awaits the Payoff From Its Bet on Condos – New York Times
As the stepchild to its more beautiful sisters in southwest Florida, Naples and Sarasota, this city has struggled for decades to revitalize its picturesque downtown and attract snowbirds and tourists.
With low-rise buildings dating back to the 1800’s, the city has the potential to be a New Urbanist paradise. But as in many other cities that began sprawling outward in the 1970’s, the downtown was long neglected until high hopes for condo development along the riverfront spurred city planners to undertake a major redevelopment effort.
The little house that could keeps paying off
When Andrew isn’t managing his investment portfolio and his substantial charitable donations, he enjoys cooking delectable souffles and working in the lush backyard of the home he shares with his partner.
At 55, the soft-spoken gent is already retired and now lives mostly off a trust created from the proceeds of his real estate investments. (Media shy, he agreed to an interview on the condition that I not use his real name.)
But lest you imagine that Andrew is another shopping-mall mogul, shameless slumlord or any other kind of businessman who has amassed tons of real estate to enrich himself, this image could hardly be further from the truth. Aside from the home he now lives in, Andrew’s total real estate ventures amount to no more than a little row house in West Berkeley that he bought in 1979 for $58,000.
Sellers juggle mortgages in tough market
Sellers juggle mortgages in tough market.
Attorneys Katie and Paul Bergstrom never expected to be shoveling snow this winter at their previous home in St. Paul’s Cathedral Hill neighborhood.
Last September, they moved into their dream home on St. Paul’s historic Summit Avenue. But the Cathedral Hill home still hasn’t sold, even after the couple gradually lowered the price to $649,500 from $795,000.
Blumberg fund to sell Brickell office tower
An investment fund run by prominent real estate investor Philip Blumberg, who is facing drug possession charges, is selling a 15-story office tower on Brickell Avenue for more than $60 million, part of the fund’s strategy to take profits amid the hot commercial real estate market.
American Ventures Property Fund has a contract to sell the 1401 Brickell Ave. building in Miami to Testa, a Madrid real estate firm that also owns the Mellon Financial Center office building in the Brickell area.