$200 million later, why are St. Pete’s poor black neighborhoods worse off?

The predominantly black, high-poverty neighborhoods south of Central Avenue have long attracted politicians courting voters with plans to turn them around.Improving the neighborhoods he dubbed Midtown was key to former Mayor Rick Baker’s vision in 2001 of a “Seamless City” where persistent racial and economic inequities would melt away.

Thirteen years later, newly elected Mayor Rick Kriseman promised to fight poverty across the region “South of Central” Avenue.Both mayors won the area by wide margins and now are vying again for its support.

Source: $200 million later, why are St. Pete’s poor black neighborhoods worse off?

The Mortgage Professor: Does it make sense to take a reverse mortgage on a $1M home?

If you own a home worth $1 million, would it ever make sense to take out a reverse mortgage?The question arises because the maximum amounts that can be drawn on a home equity conversion mortgage – the type of reverse mortgage program available through the federal government – are based on the lower of appraised value, sale price and the Federal Housing Administration maximum claim amount, which currently is $636,150.

The owner of a $1 million house, or a $10 million dollar house, can’t draw any more funds from a HECM than the owner of a house worth $636,150.

Source: The Mortgage Professor: Does it make sense to take a reverse mortgage on a $1M home?

The many lives of the Versace mansion, a Miami Beach landmark

Passing through Miami to Cuba in the early 1990s, luxury fashion designer Gianni Versace asked his cab driver to show him something “fancy and fun about Miami.”The cab driver chose South Beach. After a few minutes at the News Cafe, Versace saw something akin to the zeitgeist of Saint-Tropez and Capri during the 1970s — and made a snap decision.

“Why do we not stay here and not go to Cuba,” Versace recounted in an interview to the Miami Herald in 1993. “It was love at first sight.”

Source: The many lives of the Versace mansion, a Miami Beach landmark

Realtor couple take to heart the advice they give to clients when preparing their home for sale

Realtor/homeowner Patricia Hanly has a collection of 350 teapots, most of them English and nearly all bought from the potters who crafted them in various villages all over Great Britain. She’s reluctantly packed away all but about a dozen in preparation for the sale of her cottage-style home on Bougainvillea Street in Sarasota. She and husband/Realtor Tom Hanly did the same with family photos, paintings, 150 pieces of vintage Louis Vuitton luggage and many of the European antiques that characterize the home’s interior design.

They’ve banished clutter, even though they personally don’t view their treasured home accessories as clutter.“People coming in to view a home for sale want to be able to project themselves into the space and see how they might live in it,” said Patricia Hanly. “They have trouble doing that if there is too much of the current owners’ personality and possessions in the way. Clear out more than you think is necessary.”Her husband Tom adds to the advice he gives to clients preparing a home to go onto the market. “Fix every single thing in your house big and small before the for-sale sign goes up,” he cautioned.

Source: Take it from the pros

Should you be a landlord in your retirement? – MarketWatch

In 2005, everyone I knew was buying real estate. With no experience and no money, they bought properties they couldn’t afford and were convinced they were going to make a fortune.Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way, and most of them now have a foreclosure or short sale in their past.Does that make real estate a bad investment? No. It’s an investment. The good or bad part comes from how you approach it. What’s good for one person can be bad for another.To find out how to make real estate investments work, I decided to talk with a few experienced professionals and asked them whether real estate should be in a retirement portfolio.

Source: Should you be a landlord in your retirement? – MarketWatch

The mall isn’t dead. It’s alive and well in Tampa’s Hyde Park Village | Tampa Bay Times

Its charming open-air streets and slew of high end restaurants and boutiques made it the shopping destination in the entire Tampa Bay region. But when International Plaza opened in 2001, it took many of Hyde Park’s long-standing tenants with it. The village struggled for years as new owners came and went without investing much in it.Then a Boston real estate firm, WS Development, purchased the village in 2013 for $45 million with big plans to bring it back to its former glory.

So far, the experiment appears to be paying off.In an age where many chain retailers and traditional shopping malls are struggling to stay open, Hyde Park Village is described by analysts and brokers today as a bright spot in the industry. It was a shining example of a center that is “doing it right” at the recent International Council of Shopping Centers Recon convention in Las Vegas, the largest annual confab for the commercial real estate and retail industries.

Source: The mall isn’t dead. It’s alive and well in Tampa’s Hyde Park Village