News about properties and real estate
Love don’t live here — Newsday.com
Courtney Love lost the Olympia, Wash., historic bungalowshe bought in the late 1990s to a Los Angeles mortgage company after a foreclosure auction generated no bids.
WMC Mortgage filed a lawsuit last year in Thurston County Superior Court, seeking foreclosure after Love stopped paying the bills.
The debt on the house totaled $386,000, which includes court costs, sheriff’s fees and interest, said sheriff’s Sgt. Dan McLendon.
Adopting orphans in real estate
David Lichtenstein calls them the “orphans” of the real estate world. These unloved properties, hurt by problems real or imagined, are risks that many developers avoid. Yet for Lichtenstein, adopting orphans and leading turnarounds are his specialties.
In late 2003, Prime Retail’s stock had plunged 99 percent as investors worried that a dangerous overload of debt was putting the company at risk. The problems, however, didn’t scare away Lichtenstein, a Rockland County real estate investor who smelled an opportunity to snap up retail properties in good locations. He bought Prime Retail for a mere 18 cents a share — far below the stock’s $16 peak in 1997 — through The Lightstone Group, his privately held real estate company.
Two years after the $625.5 million buyout, a turnaround is well under way, according to Lichtenstein. The deal gave him control of 36 retail outlet centers in 23 states.
Toll Brothers plans second project on Singer Island at Ocean’s Edge.
Toll Brothers — known for luxury housing such as Frenchman’s Reserve in Palm Beach Gardens and Mizner Country Club west of Delray Beach — looked to Swedroe for its first-ever condo tower. Beach Front, a 19-story building with 51 units, was a rapid sellout during early construction, at prices from $600,000 to $2 million.
Census shows outsiders flocking to Texas
“Our original reason for moving out of California was so I could be a stay-at-home mom,” said O’Brien, who moved with her husband and two young children last year to Round Rock, north of Austin.
Philadelphia Gentrification: Tax Breaks Drive a Philadelphia Boom
After years of losing population, the downtown region, known as Center City, is booming, with developments going up and old buildings being transformed into lofts and condominiums.
That downtown Philadelphia has been experiencing a residential boom is no big surprise. Cities across the country have benefited from the real estate development frenzy of the last few years. But the changes have been accelerated here by the use of tax breaks for residential developments. Philadelphia is one of the only places to offer a citywide 10-year tax-abatement program.
Bears Issue Warnings for Condos, Condo Hotels
The Condominium Summit, co-presented this week in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., by Commercial Property News and Multi-Housing News, ended with a hearty debate over the future direction of the condo market. And when push came to shove, the condo hotel segment was hit with the greatest criticism.
Hollowell criticized more traditional residential condos. He pointed to a variety of “fuzzy fundamentals,” such as too many third-string developer sponsors, too many highly leveraged projects, “the most creative financing since the early ’20s,” unpredictable construction costs and too many investors that entered the market simply as an alternative to the stock market.