News about properties and real estate
Longtime area homeowners can’t afford to move
Fast-rising home prices make it just as difficult to relocate in Southwest Florida as it is to buy a home for the first time.
“I have been in my Cape Coral home 24 years,” said Carol Glazer, who opted for a major renovation over a move.
She couldn’t find another house where she wanted to live in Cape Coral that “was enough to my liking to justify in my mind the huge increase in property tax I would have to pay,” she said.
As mega-malls land in established communities, homeowners wonder what it means for them.
From his home in the Adams Hill neighborhood, Richard Horgan has a sweeping view of downtown Glendale framed by the Verdugo Mountains. It’s a lovely panorama — one that’s about to change.
In the coming months, a $264-million mega-development featuring high-end shops and restaurants, a 16-screen theater complex, upscale residential units and a park will begin to take shape on a 15.5-acre patch of downtown, transforming Horgan’s view as it redefines central Glendale. At the helm of the project is developer Rick Caruso, whose signature complex, the Grove, redefined the Farmers Market area.
Dozens of windows are boarded up at the ’50s mom-and-pop motel turned condo. Walkways are propped up by scaffolding. Some of the siding is gone with the wind, while tarps cover some of the roofing.
The 172-unit Seashore Club South in Sunny Isles Beach looks bombed out after Hurricane Wilma and years of decline that led to 30 feet of walkway collapsing last March.
Still, its owners may get top dollar for their million-dollar view of the ocean. A New York-based real estate investment firm is proposing to give owners $441,000 each for a unit the size of a motel room, about $76 million for the complex.
Desire and Felicity shamble down the scorching sidewalk, sodden makeup smearing sullen faces. They’re looking for the telltale sign from a driver rumbling through midafternoon traffic on Biscayne Boulevard: prolonged eye contact and a chin nod. Or maybe the reliable standby: “Excuse me, miss, but I need directions.” Both women are black, and both claim to be twentysomething, though it’s difficult to see faces behind the impassive mask of the professional sex worker.
The effects of a condo boom just a few miles south in downtown, which includes 12,000 units and more than a half-billion dollars in city-approved condo and retail construction, has sown the seeds of change along Biscayne Boulevard in Miami’s Upper Eastside — long Miami’s Skid Row. From tasteful tapas bars such as Mosaiques (at 70th Street) to brie-on-a-baguette sandwicheries like Uva 69 (at 69th), more than a dozen cafés and restaurants have opened in the area since 2003 — and at least six have survived.
MeriStar Hospitality to Sell 10 Florida Assets
MeriStar Hospitality Corporation, one of the nation’s largest hotel real estate investment trusts (REIT), has signed a definitive agreement to sell a portfolio of nine hotels (1,948 rooms) and a golf and tennis club, all located in Florida, to an affiliate of The Blackstone Group for approximately $367 million in cash, subject to certain adjustments and satisfaction of customary closing conditions. The company expects the transaction to close by the end of the first quarter 2006.
“We expect this portfolio sale to generate significant benefits for our shareholders by allowing us to accelerate our business plan objectives of repaying our more expensive debt and completing property upgrades,”
Lenders try to keep mortgage boom alive
Hoping to ride a new wave of profits as the mortgage boom winds down, lenders have changed course and are targeting borrowers with adjustable-rate mortgages and encouraging them to refinance into fixed-rate loans.
Many lenders have been pushing adjustable-rate loans as a way for borrowers to keep their monthly payments down, stretch their budgets to afford a bigger house and use their home equity to get cash. Now, with short-term interest rates having moved up much faster than long-term rates, lenders are rediscovering the marketing appeal of fixed-rate mortgages. Currently, a 30-year-fixed rate loan carries a 6.27 percent rate, according to HSH Associates, while a one-year ARM, which adjusts annually, has a 5.39 percent rate.