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Josh Stein 305.695.8257

The Real Deal South Florida - Latest News

The Real Deal - South Florida Real Estate News

09/02/2010 09:00 AM

Colliers International opens WPB office

Colliers International has opened a new Palm Beach location and launched a brokerage team, the firm announced today. The new location is at 224 Datura Street, Suite 515 in downtown West Palm Beach. The office will have a team focused on Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties, led by senior vice president Kevin McCarthy. Before joining Colliers, McCarthy served as managing director of Worth Realty. Also joining the company is Nicholas Brusca as a commercial associate. TRD

09/02/2010 08:15 AM

Royal Palm at Southpointe sells for $100.4M

The Royal Palm at Southpointe office complex in Plantation has been sold for $100.4 million to buyer Duke Realty, according to Broward County Records. The sale works out to around $216 per square foot for the 465,492-square-foot mid-rise office park, which opened its first building in 2001. Ed Mitchell, senior VP of Duke Realty's South Florida operations, said the complex was one of the niest properties in west Broward, and fit into the company's strategy of having top Class-A properties. The two-building Royal Palm is 90 percent leased and includes Ameriprise Financial and Equitrac as tenants. [SFBJ]

09/02/2010 07:30 AM

NACA to open permanent Miami office

The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, which just wrapped up a five-day mortgage modification expo in West Palm Beach, announced that it would be opening a permanent office in Miami. This visit was the group's third in South Florida, with previous events at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in February and in Miami Beach in April. CEO Bruce Marks said a permanent office in Miami could be open within the next two months. The main focus of the office will be offering low-interest loans to prospective home buyers -- the original reason the group was created in 1988, but it will also have someone on hand to help with loan modifications. [Miami Herald]

09/02/2010 06:45 AM

Instanet, Florida Realtors part ways

Instanet Solutions, a provider of internet-based transaction management solutions, says it is signing long-term agreements with multiple listings services and local Realtor associations in Florida. The company's contract with Florida Realtors, the statewide realtor association, expires at the end of the year, and Florida Realtors is transitioning to its own forms application. For five years, Florida Realtors and Instanet have had an agreement to provide the company's TransactionDesk to all 145,000 of the association's members as part of their monthly dues. [Inman]

09/02/2010 06:00 AM

Loan mod expo ends in West Palm Beach ... and more

1. Loan mod expo ends in West Palm Beach [Palm Beach Post]
2. Le Kabob opens in Brickell [Urban Daddy]
3. Construction spending hits ten-year low [SFBJ]
4. New Society of the Four Arts pavilion in PB [Palm Beach Daily News]
5. Private equity firm Peak 10 shifting ownership [SFBJ]
6. Be careful reading the Case-Shiller report [WSJ via Patrick.net]
7. Foreign tourists increase spending [Miami Herald]

09/01/2010 02:00 PM

Biggest price cut of the day

507 Palm Drive

The South Florida home to see the biggest price cut today is a two-bedroom, two-bathroom house at 507 Palm Drive in Hallandale Beach, according to data from Condo Vultures Realty. The $2.4 million Broward County home saw a $550,000, or 19 percent, price cut. It was originally listed for $2.95 million when it hit the market Aug. 18. The 5,638-square-foot, waterfront home sits on a 15,000-square-foot lot in gated Golden Isles and has a pool, dock and open floor plan with vaulted ceilings. Revital Rikman of Rickenback Realty has the listing. (Condo Vultures data includes condos and single-family home listings in the main metropolitan areas of Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Key West that are priced at $1 million and above, and that include photographs. Listings are taken from the South Florida MLS.) TRD

09/01/2010 01:00 PM

Housing crash not quite over: economist

While home prices were up nationwide in the second quarter of the year, economist Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com said we're not quite through with the housing crash. We've got another 5 percent or so to go on house prices," he said in the in the CBS Money Watch video above. Yale economist Robert Shiller noted that instead of focusing on the housing market, the country should be more concerned with creating jobs. "If we create jobs, I think that the mood of the country will change," he said.

09/01/2010 12:15 PM

HUD unveils program to help foreclosure-ridden areas

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development unveiled a program today aimed at helping communities badly hit by the foreclosure crisis avoid sweeping vulture investors. The "National First Look Program" will offer select state and local governments a right of first refusal on foreclosed homes, before they're made available to private buyers. The benefit of this, said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, is that it may help communities preserve buildings and put them to use based on the area's specific needs. "Local communities will now get an exclusive option to buy foreclosed properties in targeted neighborhoods so they can turn the homes into affordable housing or, in some cases, tear them down," Donovan said. This "will help rebuild neighborhoods that have been struggling with blight and declining home values due to foreclosures." TRD

09/01/2010 11:30 AM

Tiger Woods takes out $54.5M mortgage on Jupiter Island home

Just after his highly public divorce was finalized, Tiger Woods has reportedly taken out a $54.5 million mortgage on his new Florida mansion in Jupiter Island, according to TMZ.com. He is listed on the mortgage as a "single man." The home is expected to have a tennis court, oxygen therapy room, many pools and a fitness center. The loan should be repaid by 2016, according to the site. Woods has a host of real estate properties in Florida, including homes in the Orlando area and one he is building for his mother in Jupiter. [New York Daily News]

09/01/2010 11:15 AM

Shiller urges new approach to housing crisis

Policy makers need to be more “inspirational” when designing solutions to the housing market crisis, according to Yale economist Robert Shiller, after whom the S&P's Case-Shiller Home Price Index is named and which released its second quarter findings yesterday. Shiller noted that it did not make sense to extend the homebuyer tax credit, and that the responses by the Bush and Obama administrations have amounted to “patches and bailouts,” he told the Wall Street Journal. Shiller believes that the solution lies in more “forward thinking” measures. One suggestion he offered was that mortgages should be indexed to inflation to allow for greater long-term certainty for borrowers. Another idea was that mortgage contracts in the future should include some kind of “preplanned workout,” detailing how a loan modification would proceed if the borrower fell behind on payments. Though the Obama administration has launched a debate on how to overhaul Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it’s not clear how much that debate will focus on ideas like those suggested by Shiller. [WSJ]

09/01/2010 10:30 AM

Poor tax laws hinder real estate: NAR

People in the commercial real estate sector should be focused on carried interest rates -- a share of the profits of a partnership that is paid to the manager of the partnership as an incentive to maximize performance of the investment fund -- and opening credit lines, according to Bill Armstrong, treasurer-elect of the National Association of Realtors. “How carried interest is taxed affects how attractive commercial real estate is to buyers,” Armstrong said in a podcast moderated by Jim Helsel, NAR’s outgoing treasurer. The House of Representatives recently passed a proposal to tax carried interest at the regular income tax rate, instead of at its present capital gains tax rate, which is “not a good move,” Armstrong said. “We need to be encouraging investment in commercial real estate right now, not putting poor tax laws in place that would hinder it.” Currently, credit unions are only able to loan up to 12.25 percent of their assets, which Armstrong says is an “arbitrary cap.” He proposes that the credit union lending cap should be raised to 25 percent, allowing them to lend up to $10 billion in additional business loans, and which will create 108,000 jobs, he added. [NAR]

09/01/2010 09:45 AM

Refis hit another 15-month high

With mortgage interest rates lately hitting record lows week after week, loan application volume, particularly amongst those seeking to refinance, is picking up. Refinancing applications rose 2.8 percent, reaching another 15-month high, in the week that ended Aug. 27, according to a new report from the Mortgage Bankers Association. Purchasing applications also increased by 1.8 percent, though they were down 37 percent over one year ago. Meanwhile, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage registered a drop in interest rates to 4.43 percent from 4.55 percent the week before. Its 15-year counterpart saw a similar decline, to 3.88 percent from 3.91 percent. Michael Fratantoni, vice president of research and economics for the MBA, predicted that the relatively low volume of purchase applications foreshadows a rough couple of months ahead in the housing market. "The sharp decline in MBA's Purchase Application index in May had provided a clear leading indicator of the drops in new and existing home sales that were reported for June and July,” he said. “Despite the slight increase in purchase activity in the past week, the continued low level of purchase applications indicates we are unlikely to see an increase in new home sales reported for August or existing home sales reported for September." TRD

09/01/2010 09:00 AM

Report: faulty water system caused Epic death

The death of an English tourist due to Legionnaire's disease last year at the Epic hotel was likely caused by a faulty water system, according to a report by Miami-Dade Health Department officials. The department detected the bacteria that causes the disease, which also infected nine others at the hotel, when they tested water samples at the 411-room hotel on Biscayne Boulevard. "A causal relationship is likely because of the extent of the contamination found at the hotel." the report said. [Sun Sentinel]

09/01/2010 08:15 AM

Florida developers look for foreign money

Developers are more frequently turning to the federal EB-5 program, which lets foreigners who invest at least $500,000 in certain job-creating ventures to obtain U.S. residency with their families. One such investor is Leo Tabatchnik, who has plans for a $131 million Margaritaville Resort on Hollywood Beach. Tabatchnik is hoping to use the program to find $75 million from 150 investors abroad, working with a Weston-based firm that would market their beachfront project in China, South Korea, Venezuela, the United Kingdom and other nations. [Sun Sentinel]

09/01/2010 07:30 AM

Job growth drives PBC apartment market

Palm Beach County saw its best half-year period of job growth in three years in the first six months of 2010, strengthening the fundamentals of the county's apartment market, according to Marcus & Millichap's latest Apartment Research update on Palm Beach County. While the operating results of 2010 constitute a positive trend, job creation will likely slow in the months ahead as employers remain cautious. According to the report, there will be a total 0.9 percent increase in employment in the county, along with 217 newly-constructed units, and a 40-basis point decrease in vacancy, down to 8.8 percent. Large-property asking rents are also predicted to increase 1.6 percent this year to around $1,078 per month. TRD

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