News about properties and real estate
Real estate market gets hotter after storm passes
November brought a booming residential real estate market to parts of the New Orleans area that escaped Hurricane Katrina-related flooding, with the total value of sales climbing 50 percent over the same month a year ago, figures released Friday by a leading real estate firm show.
The biggest increases came in areas such as the West Bank, East Jefferson and St. Charles parish.
Condo conversion craze makes finding apartments harder
Diana Perez got the letter a few months ago: the apartment complex where she and her family live was converting into condominiums. They had to leave if they couldn’t pay a 20 percent down payment on their two-bedroom apartment, now selling for $185,000.
That’s $37,000 up front on the apartment they now rent for $900 a month – too much for the 36-year-old who works in nail salon and her car salesman husband, so they’re looking for someplace else. But in the red hot Florida real estate market, they’re having trouble finding anything comparable nearby.
21-story condo tower at N. Flagler OK’d
Another stretch of shoreline, another condo.
The condo is the latest in hundreds of new condo units that are quickly changing the landscape along what used to be the sleepy northern edge of Flagler Drive. Earlier this year, four condo towers and retail space were approved for the Rybovich Spencer marina, now owned by Huizenga Holdings, just to the south of Related’s property.
Investors propel real estate boom
Florida’s favorite pastime? Not football, golf or fishing. It’s real estate, and everyone’s doing it.
When Manatee Community College offers a class called “Flipping Houses” — and it is — you can bet everyone is in the tank.
N.Y. Rent Laws Enabling Out-of-Town Luxury
Thousands of New Yorkers, taking advantage of rent-stabilization laws designed to keep middle-class New Yorkers in the city, are using the money they are saving on rent to buy weekend or vacation homes outside New York in places such as Florida, Connecticut, and even Switzerland.
Housing Price Appreciation Cooling Slightly
The housing price appreciation boom isn’t dead, it’s shifting to new real estate markets. Arizona and Florida are on fire, but San Diego and Boston — once the hottest markets in the country — are now distinctly moving into a cooling phase.
The third quarter appreciation report issued by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) last Wednesday documented a modest decline in the national average annual appreciation rate — 12 percent versus 14 percent last quarter. But the report also identified a new batch of leaders in house price growth: Arizona, where the average home soared a stunning 30 percent in resale value between the third quarter of 2004 and the same period this year, and Florida, which now accounts for 11 of the top 20 fastest-appreciating metropolitan real estate markets in the U.S.