The Pompoms Are On The Ground In Florida
The Palm Beach Post reports from Florida. “In a hopeful sign for the moribund condo market, the developer of a struggling downtown condominium decided not to sell 156 units in a discounted bulk sale - a decision that has West Palm Beach condo owners breathing a sigh of relief. Instead of a fire sale, Wood Partners is keeping the units at The Edge and renting them. Wood began building the 307-unit Edge during the boom but didn’t finish until the bust had set in.”
“With vulture investors shopping for condo bargains in South Florida, real estate brokerage CB Richard Ellis approached Wood with the idea of marketing the units to hedge funds and other institutional investors, said Jay Jacobson, a partner at the development firm..”
“That process yielded ‘offers at a price point that bordered on insulting,’ he said. So Wood decided to rent the units at The Edge instead.”
“There are 1,200 units coming on the market soon. How many buyers of those units will close and how many will walk away from their deposits remains a mystery.”
“In the meantime, Wood Partners is working with reluctant buyers who have contracts but can’t or don’t want to close. Wood has agreed to pay closing costs, cover association fees for a year or two and, in a couple of cases, cut the price 5 percent to 10 percent.”
“‘We’re doing anything we can to get those units closed,’ Jacobson said.”
“At first glance, a proposal to build 2,700 homes at the Briger tract along Interstate 95 sounds like folly. After all, Palm Beach County’s housing market is glutted with unwanted homes.”
“But on closer inspection, the Lester family’s plans for the land just south of Donald Ross Road makes sense, housing analysts say. By the time homes are built on the site, the housing market is likely to be healthier - and critically short on vacant lots, said Brad Hunter, a housing analyst at Metrostudy.
“Palm Beach County’s housing inventory includes 5,425 vacant lots, he said. ‘Even though we have an oversupply of homes, we have a shortage of lots,’ he said.”
The Daily Business Review. “The developer of a struggling condominium conversion project in Pembroke Pines has sold a substantial portion of the development to real estate investment trust, Equity Residential.”
“The units average 1,052 square feet in size and sold for about $147,000 per unit.”
“Equity Residential paid $68 million last week for 24 buildings with 464 units. The seller, Deaktor Development, paid more than $142 million in October 2005 for the entire 764-unit, 44-acre complex.”
“In today’s distressed condo market, the most logical strategy for Equity Residential is to convert the complex back to rental units, said Brad Capas, senior director of apartment brokerage services at Cushman & Wakefield’s Fort Lauderdale office.”
“‘What Equity bought was intact and well positioned to operate as a rental,’ Capas said.”
“Deaktor had trouble with a similar condo conversion project in Kendall during the spring. Miami-Dade County delinquent tax records released in May indicated the company had not paid $1.12 million in taxes on The Residences at the Falls. Deaktor is now stuck with about 370 units at that site.”
The News Press. “The slow rise in permits for single-family homes in Lee County was short-lived. Cape Coral, which saw an increase the past two months, had the biggest drop. The city’s building department issued 14 permits, down 59 percent from the 34 issued in May and a drop of 80 percent from the 69 issued in June 2007, city spokeswoman Connie Barron said.”
“In unincorporated Lee County, Bonita Springs and Fort Myers Beach, 74 permits were issued. That’s a 7.5 percent drop from the previous five-month high of 80 in May. June’s total was an 83 percent decrease from the 448 issued in June 2007.”
“The number of foreclosure actions last month in Lee County was 2,390, which is up 147 percent from the 968 foreclosure actions in June 2007, said Jeff Tumbarello, director of the Southwest Florida Real Estate Investors Association. He added that banks lost an average of $170,000 per mortgage on which they foreclosed.”
“Michael Gay, general manager of the Fort Myers division of Adams Homes, doesn’t think he will see anything like the good old days of the early 2000s. ‘I think it will be several, several, several years before we see something like that again,’ Gay said.”
The Naples News. “Once again records were broken in June in Lee and Collier counties but not of the good kind. In Collier, new foreclosure filings jumped to an all-time high of 716. In the first six months of this year, there were 3,827 filings. That’s more than the 3,266 for all of last year.”
“Glenn Ginsburg, a broker in North Naples, said he saw the trend coming in early 2007. ‘I just never envisioned it would get this bad,’ he said. ‘I knew we would see an increase, but not like what we’ve seen.’”
“He said ‘it’s hysteria that’s setting in’ because owners have seen their values go down so much that they’ve decided they don’t want to own their homes anymore, so they are stopping their mortgage payments and ‘turning them back in.’”
“The discount signs printed on computer paper are in the windows of home decor store Reflections of Naples in Third Street Plaza. It’s a moving sale, the signs announce.”
“‘We were so hard hit. Nobody was coming,’ said Reflections owner Larry Harris. ‘(Reflections) was fun. I enjoyed it. I just went into this too big.’”
“In the past two years, The Good Life, a cookware store, left the Plaza; so did Bountiful, Artful Diva, Femme Fatale, Dominique Design Studio, Giggles and Glitz, Via Mediterranee, and ilSandalo. On Gallery Row, the side that faces Broad Avenue, Gallery Matisse is gone, too.”
“With nine storefronts out of 23 vacant after this weekend, and six of the 10 office spaces empty on the second floor, spirits are low among the remaining tenants. ‘The pompoms are on the ground,’ said Tricia Lund, sitting in her store. ‘My cheerleading (for the plaza) is over.’”
The Herald Tribune. “New construction in the region was down more than $2 billion last year, a leading factor in pushing local unemployment rate to a 15-year high. New construction in North Port totaled $193 million last year, a 70 percent drop from the $655 million reported in 2006. New construction dropped 62 percent in the unincorporated parts of Sarasota County.”
“Sarasota County Property Appraiser Jim Todora said he did not think the county’s new construction would top even $1 billion last year. But several condominium projects that were nearly complete in 2006, but were not finished until 2007, pushed the figure higher than expected.”
“‘A lot of this, remember, are carryovers from the prior year,’ Todora said. ‘Sometimes there are properties that are 90 percent done but they don’t go on the roll for another year.’”
“Based on the first half of this year, the numbers for 2008 will be a lot worse, said Dale Friedley, an analyst with the Manatee County Property Appraiser’s Office. ‘My projection right now is we’ll be around $400 million,’ Friedley said.”
“Ed Hunzeker, Manatee’s county administrator, said the county should not add the extra money to its budget since more bad financial news is likely around the corner. There are still tax appeals filed by local landowners that have not been settled. The county could lose those appeals and the taxes that go with them.”
“The increase in home sales in Manatee, Sarasota and Charlotte counties, coupled with new user-friendly FHA loans and new loan limits, seems to be helping to lift mortgage applications out of the basement rate of the past two years.”
“Frank Fontanetta, president of Sentinel Mortgage Co. of Sarasota, said he has seen an increase on the purchase side, though refinancing remains very slow. ‘We’re not going crazy with volume,’ Fontanetta said. ‘There’s no one I know in this business saying things are gangbusters.’”
“The tough standards are not so much new as they are a return to the traditional methods of qualifying borrowers before the housing boom, said John O’Neill, CEO of Century Bank in Sarasota. ‘You could say the market is returning to the home prices of five years ago, and that we’re returning to the lending practices of five years ago.’”
“New guidelines by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have meant that banks have to scrutinize new loan applications like never before — particularly when it comes to condominiums, said Fontanetta.”
“‘If you’re talking about a condo, even a borrower with 40 percent or 50 percent down and good credit, it’s not a slam dunk,’ he said. ‘Everything that wasn’t as important before is suddenly much more important.’”
The Bradenton Herald. “The year is barely half over, but 2008 is already a record for foreclosure filings in Manatee County. Lenders filed 478 foreclosure lawsuits in Manatee County Circuit Court in June, nearly three times more than the 167 they filed in June 2007, the Manatee County Clerk of Court’s office said.”
“That pushed the total number of foreclosure actions filed in the first six months of 2008 to 2,660, breaking the old annual record of 2,620 set last year.”
“‘We’re still having a tremendous amount of boxes being dropped off and delivered to us,’ said Very Reyna, a court clerk who handles foreclosure actions as they are filed. ‘It’s not letting up.’”
“And with six more months to go, each new suit sets a mark that some predict could reach 4,000 by year’s end.”
“‘It’s really a perfect storm out there right now,’ said David Freed, president of a mortgage brokerage based in Bradenton. ‘I personally don’t think it will clear up in the short term.’”
The St Petersburg Times. “It was supposed to be a perpetual prosperity machine powered by the eternal sunshine. For several years the fevered land flipping, home building and road grading transformed the Tampa Bay area.”
“But just as people were counting their profits toward early retirement, a hurricane pulled the plug on the hyperactivity. Buyers turned cautious. Property could be had for 50 cents on the dollar. Paper fortunes vanished, and banks shuttered. Disillusioned Floridians pined for the hills of North Carolina.”
“Sound familiar? It’s an outline of the 1920s Florida real estate boom and bust. But historical amnesiacs can be mistaken for assuming it describes the real estate roller coaster that’s recently rocked our region.”
“‘Most people today have almost no historical sense of the boom and bust of the ’20s,’ said Ray Arsenault, history professor at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg. ‘When I bring it up, many people don’t know what I’m talking about.’”
“As the Times described them in 1925, business practices foreshadowed those of the recent boom: ‘Sales are usually made with a small amount of cash being put up as ‘binder money.’ The investor who does not really have any use for the property except for profit on quick resale gets busy and resells it before the first payment falls due.’”
“By late 1925, the smart money sensed the fever would break. The boom had run out of fuel. Walter Fuller, who lost millions in the bust from building neighborhoods like Jungle Terrace, blamed a ‘greedy delirium to acquire riches overnight without benefit of effort, brains or services rendered.’”
“‘We just ran out of suckers,’ Fuller said with the hindsight of several decades.”
The Star Banner. “Marion County’s gravy train of growth, which has fueled its construction-based economy and allowed local governments’ budgets and services to swell, is moving in reverse.”
“The county’s assessed taxable value, which local governments use to determine how much property tax revenue is coming in, shrunk 6.7 percent from a year ago, according to Marion County Property Appraiser records.”
“Property Appraiser Villie Smith’s assessment for the county is based on values determined up to January 2008. ‘We’ll probably see another reduction next year based upon what we’ve seen after January,’ he said. ‘Sales prices have continued to go down.’”
“‘That’s the first decrease ever since I’ve been in here [in the Property Appraiser's Office] and that’s 33 years,’ Smith said. ‘And I’m sure it goes back farther than that.’”
“‘We just ran out of suckers,’ Fuller said with the hindsight of several decades.”
What the world needs now is
love sweet lovea Ponzi prevention task force.LOL!
Nuuuuooobody expects the Ponzi Prevention Task Force!
Quick, Bicycle Repair Man, bring out the Manual Underwriting!
FB’s: NOOOOOO!!!!
So that’s what Prof Bear really means by the PPT(F)???
The SPT article is an interesting read in full.
If this is true:
‘He added that banks lost an average of $170,000 per mortgage on which they foreclosed.’
We aren’t hearing the truth from the media. They keep saying that banks are losing about 40-50k per foreclosure. This larger number suggests they are undercutting the resale market by much more.
I don’t think it is the SPT article: “Pinellas failed to learn real estate lessons of 1920s”…it’s the News-Press article “Housing permits in Lee County tumble”
The media appears to publish what they are told to.
This is really just “the media appears to publish what they are told.”
“A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he’s ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him.”
– John Maynard Keynes, 1931
There are plenty of sound bankers.
You don’t hear of them because they are sound, and hence they are about as boring as baked mud.
You see the flash and sizzle but there are lot of bankers sitting quite comfortably, and you’ve never heard of them, and you never will.
That’s what sound means.
“That process yielded ‘offers at a price point that bordered on insulting,’ he said. So Wood decided to rent the units at The Edge instead.”
Insulting? Yea. I get it.
We had Florida “cracker boxes” go from $85,000 to $250,000 over the course of about 3 years here in Central Florida.
I couldn’t believe the audacity of Realtors ™ to even have the nerve to ask such a ridiculous price.
I guess turnabout’s fair play.
And even at this late date, we still hear the shortage word:
‘By the time homes are built on the site, the housing market is likely to be healthier - and critically short on vacant lots, said Brad Hunter, a housing analyst at Metrostudy.’
Keep feeding the bear, Metrostudy…
“Palm Beach County’s housing inventory includes 5,425 vacant lots, he said. ‘Even though we have an oversupply of homes, we have a shortage of lots,’ he said.”
Huh? These quotes are getting whackier by the hour.
Well,,dude, when they start bulldozing those empty stripped houses, there won’t be any shortage of lots.
LOL
High Five!!!
It’s a genuine crisis alright—thousands of houses nobody wants, and no space to build more.
Ha ha, did you hear about the community redevelopment agency in Gainesville, FL lowering the price on their renovated crackerbox last week? They wanted $250K, couldn’t sell, so revised down to $170K. It’s probably worth about $90K, all fixed up like that, given the neighborhood that it’s in. (And that would be generous.)
“Glenn Ginsburg, a broker in North Naples, said he saw the trend coming in early 2007. ‘I just never envisioned it would get this bad,’ he said. ‘I knew we would see an increase, but not like what we’ve seen.’”
Which goes to prove, once again, that Brokers, and in particular those “professional” Realtors are absolutely Clueless about the Real Estate market.
All they knew was when cheap money and credit flooded the markets, malinvestments in real estate were prolific.
They gave us dozens of rationalizations, but never really understood what was driving the market.
They still don’t. Check the mortgage reset schedules for Sub-prime, Alt-A and Neg Am mortgages available everywhere on the Net. The foreclosures are following right on cue!
Mr. Ginsburg, you’re an idiot!
This isn’t so much about the RE market as it is about debt-to-income ratios and an appreciation of the buyer’s median incomes.
I have gone out house hunting in Tampa waiting for the moment of surrender and it’s still not here. While you can certainly find bank-owned 4/3/3’s for 75-120 a square foot, the REIC just doesn’t accept that this is a credit crisis caused by their behavior. I had a salesman at the Mercedes Toulon development send me an email with an article from Fox13 about how real estate agents expect the market to turn around quickly. I responded that I don’t take investment or house buying advice from realtors because everyday “is a great day” to buy a home. I than attached articles from Bloomberg detailing how Sec. Paulson thinks housing will continue to fall and how the next credit crisis is just beginning. Needless to say, I haven’t gotten a reply to my email. Ah, denial…..it is a long river.
You are correct that surrender is not here, at least not with anything being marketed by our stupefyingly dense realtor community, who have to be hoping for stupefying dense Canadian and European buyers taking advantage of the weak dollar to supplant greedy homegrown speculators. But I am confident that surrender will come, because every single factor that produced bubble prices in Tampa is gone, starting with reckless lending and borrowing. The era where housing prices anywhere in this country make ownership out of reach for local people earning local wages is coming to an end.
Just my two cents, but what’s also ending is mass popular ownership of second homes, along with mass retirements to Sunbelt states and mass tourism. Florida is going to be so different in a generation that no one will recognize it.
For what it’s worth, I looked at the Case-Shiller index for Tampa and found that if you throw out data starting around 2002, you get an average yearly appreciation rate in the low 2% range. (The data goes back to 1987 and backing up or moving forward the end date doesn’t make much difference) Extrapolating out, from the pre-2002 data, homes are about 30% overvalued in the area. I’m real interested in seeing where prices go after school starts. My first prognostication here is that at that point, we’ll start seeing prices dropping at a faster pace.
Prices already dropping fast, as the spring selling season failed to materialize.
I can only shudder to think* of what will happen when school starts. Enrollment shrank last year (except in Alachua County–and they’re probably next); I expect it to be even worse this coming year. They’ve laid off a LOT of school teachers, but it seems like art education and school nurses and stuff like that gets the axe first. Oh well, it’s also easy to drop subs. I guess in some counties they had subs teaching classes full time.
*-or shiver with glee, when I consider price drops in housing
A shrinking base of workers will be bad for the state pension fund. Hm, I wonder if they also invested with Lehman?
The ‘27 Florida crash is almost mirroring the present state of the market.
I’m waiting for the Commercial shoe to drop next, what with the bills coming due,and even vulture funds buying now. I see the next leg down starting soon,and continuing down at an ever increasing rate. There is many that connect the Fl. RE crash to a partial cause of the GD…Re: One spec bubble rolled into the next….Just so eerily similar.
Well geezlouise, that was one comment I hope Ouro doesn’t see. She’ll be down in the cellar getting another fine bottle of Chatueax Bordeaux or Chamonix or whatever it was to kill the pain.
And I sent an email a few days ago to a commercial developer in W. Colorado to join us here on the blog, his million dollar house has been on the market for 18 months and not selling and he seemed to be feeling the pain. Said he was going to up the price if I’d rent it at 4k/month (I was asking how I could be sure he wouldn’t sell it while I was renting it..a typical smartass comment that he for sure didn’t get).
Right, like I’d pay that much to rent, why, I’d just go buy, makes more sense. /sarcasm
And there have been a number of posts here that indicate that commercial is indeed now tanking.
The oversupply in commercial is breathtaking as well. I was in Northern NV around a month ago, and there was a sea of newly completed, vacant space. I have no idea how these developers can afford the carrying costs; I don’t think they can. It appears as if there may be some serious pain at hand for many financial institutions. I think we’re going to start to see some bank failures soon.
I was a passenger in a vehicle yesterday and consciously observed the several dozen strip malls we passed during a lengthy drive through sprawl. There are quite a few vacancies — almost one per building, and sometimes more. This is in addition to well-advertised vacancies in downtown Tampa, and to all the condo towers that have empty space in place of the hoped for bustling upscale ground-floor retail, and of course to the three gigantic malls being built in Pasco County flipperville. How can the word for the day be anything other than “overcapacity”?
“I was a passenger in a vehicle yesterday and consciously observed…”
Snake, that almost sounds like an abduction or something, you OK? LOL!
Heh. My sister-in-law’s husband was driving a bunch of us to Busch Gardens. I’m still like a kid when it comes to riding roller coasters, sitting in the front row and raising my hands above my head. Any kind of “virtual reality” ride, however, makes me motion sick.
“I have no idea how these developers can afford the carrying costs; I don’t think they can”
I don’t think they ever were. Banks,Hedge funds, Pension funds were pumping money in while the developers and CEOs’ were siphoning it off. Show the growth chart ,and in comes another pile O’money.
Now it’s flooding in Oil with the same desperate chasing of return.
Fund mgrs., CEOs’ etc. get their cut..when it fails ala Mozilo,Lay, Lereah etc. …wave goodbye while retiring to their private island with blawkhawk security force.
I have no idea how these developers can afford the carrying costs; I don’t think they can”
I read an article last week that seemed to indicate the developers were paying the debt service by borrowing more against their lines: interest reserves I think the term was called. This is when the bank lends money to the developer in a way to make it look as if the loan is current when in fact all that is happening is the bank and the developer are getting further behind. The article seemed to indicate that FDIC was wise to this game and they were cracking down on this type of arrangement. I could see how this could be tempting for the banks to do this. They get to report the loan as a performing loan, when in actuality, it is a recipe for disaster. I’m glad the FDIC is aware of this.
It’s an outrage and a perpetration.
the fdic has been asleep at the wheel. where were they when the banks were loading up their balanc sheets with real estate loans funded by brokered deposits. what you know, most c&d loans were being kept current with interest reserves or the developers were kiting loans among several banks as they failed to control disbursements. guess what the banks not only issued an interest reserve with the initial loan, but many have issued a second when the original loan did not pay-off. this second one is now what has the fdic concerned.
the recent statements from the fdic are laughable as they are years late. reminds me of the memorable line from casablanca by captain renault — “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”
Another story to tell from a 4th of July BBQ at a friends house and surprise, surprise one of the guests was a realtor. Well, when she heard I was looking and that I had rented for the past three years she made a snide comment that I had nothing to show for it. I was nice, but it set me off. I said that the home I was renting had already dropped by over 100K and that my rent was less than 58K for those 3 years and that if I would have bought I would have lost money. She was oblivious. On the street we were on were 3 REO’s, 3 short sales and 4 other For Sales out of about 40 houses. Than she gave me the, “well you should buy since you don’t have to pay a realtor.” I told her the only one showing up at closing and having to pay in the end was the buyer and I was paying everyone’s salary. She laughed nervously and said, “if you look at it like that, I guess that’s true.” A small glimmer of sentience but it dimmed quickly.
Ah, you are a true soldier, Soldier. Fighting the battle of ignorance and greed and idiocy.
Soldier on.
Even setting aside depreciation, I never understood the concept that the difference between rent and mortgage payments would necessarily be fretted away. They just assume because they are irresponsible with handling money, unless it is locked away in some quazi forced savings plan like home ownership, others must too.
Ppl like us will buy their foreclosures with cash in a few years. Show me in 5 years who has nothing to show for it.
Good point. And the underlying premise is that the value of houses always goes up. They can’t shift their thinking to follow reality.
Maintenance costs are always a consideration when purchasing a house, too. Of course I seem to gravitate towards old homes, so there’s always something to fix. I do it myself, but materials are not cheap. Most people have to call someone, in which case it really adds up.
I remodeled my house, did spackling, new sink, new lights, painted, etc., mostly cosmetic. Had a deadline (turned it into a resort rental, had people coming) and about killed myself. I have a very high regard for people who can do plumbing, carpentry, etc. It’s not easy, if you do it right, anyway. I don’t know much about doing it right. My dad spent a lot of time on the phone telling me how to do basic electric, etc., step by step. I was lucky to not electricute myself. I also wired in a new cooler - the house is still standing, so I guess I did an OK job, didn’t burn down.
That’s a good girl!
There’s more to the story (there always is)…the woman who bought it gutted it to the studs and redid everything. LOL!
You kill me, you really do.
“Well, when she heard I was looking and that I had rented for the past three years she made a snide comment that I had nothing to show for it. I was nice. . . ”
Parroting the “house prices only go up” nonsense is SOP for these people. I ignore it. But try to personally ridicule me for not participating in your economic idiocy, and I will not be nice.
Way to kick her butt. Just in general, people who treat social gatherings as a sales opportunity annoy the s__t out of me.
Well, have you ever considered fighting fire with fire?
Cozy up to them. Let them pick up a tab for a meal or two.
I even had one pay for two bottles of Ruffino Riserva Ducale Oro (chianti) 1997 at a restaurant once.
Then, I said no. C’est la vie. And so it goes.
What Brad Hunter a housing analyst at Metrostudy means
Even though we have an oversupply of lots with homes on them, we have a shortage of lots with no homes on them.
‘home decor store Reflections…The Good Life, a cookware store, left the Plaza; so did Bountiful, Artful Diva, Femme Fatale, Dominique Design Studio, Giggles and Glitz, Via Mediterranee, and ilSandalo. On Gallery Row, the side that faces Broad Avenue, Gallery Matisse is gone, too.’
Not Giggles and Glitz! First the candle makers and pirate shops, and now Artful Diva!
IMO, it’s a good cleansing to wring these frivolous things out of the economy.
Ben, I walk into one of those shops and feel like I’m going to have an anxiety attack, like I’m going to have to completely re-examine my entire philosophy of life if I stay there a moment longer. Talk about useless crap.
I think that kind of shopping is akin to taking drugs.
Come to New York, baby!
We show you the same useless except “artfully” packaged, and sold for 1,000 or 10,000 times more.
We can puke on the sidewalk together. Being New York, nobody will notice either.
I flew over it once and it was really scary! LOL!
Come by. I’ll show you how to navigate it.
Once you recognize that it’s basically the wilderness except you need a field guide, you know the rules already.
yeah, but I’m used to having it cushy, you know, just little nuisances like rattlers and rabid scorpions, none of that bigtime stuff…
We got plenty of racoons in Central Park. Mean ones too.
And in Sarasota the mall builders are constructing a HUGE upscale mall at the intersection of Highway 75 and University.
Build it and they will come? Hmmm
PalmBeachPost.com
New headline Forclosures to rise no matter who is in the White House
‘The pompoms are on the ground,’ said Tricia Lund, sitting in her store.
It’s pompon. A pompom is a naval gun. Maybe, though, she meant pompom, so that it would blow her store away, so she could collect the insurance!
Pom tiddly pom tiddly, pom pom pom.
Sorry, did you have a point you wanted to make?
Maybe she meant tampons.
For those that love to see quick educations. YOU HAVE GOT TO SEE THIS. Ben published this just June 23rd:
“Caleb Atkins gave himself a heckuva birthday present Sunday: a two-bedroom, two-bath condominium on the top floor of the Tribute Lofts building east of downtown Atlanta. Tribute sold 26 units in an unusual one-hour auction Sunday at the Omni Hotel at CNN Center. . . . I’m about to go and celebrate pretty heavily,’ said Atkins, a Georgia Tech graduate who works in Suwanee and turns 25 on Friday. ‘I prefer to live where I play. . . . Atkins is a homeowner for the first time. He paid $263,000 - the highest price at the auction - for the 1,306-square-foot unit. Atkins pointed out his winning bid was ‘30.77 percent’ less than the original asking price of $379,900.”
I found this gem on the internet. The Developer already undercut him by at least $20k in a single week (note that two bedroom in the add actually had a HIGHER base price than his unit; it has much better views), and no pressure of an auction. Not to mention that is just the asking price, I assume you can get the developer down at least another $10k. Somehow I think young college grad is sobering up pretty quickly. PRICELESS. An uninformed public and auctions dont mix. Just out of college and lost 30k in a single week, and celebrated getting the opportunity. Life can be a bitch. Me thinks he regrets his decision, and no longer is on the RE bandwagon.
http://www.tributelofts.com/
I read something about this a few days ago. But now it looks like he really got clipped. I’d bet before its over (with future price drops and discounts) he’ll lose maybe $100k on the deal.
More.
You have to ask who’s going to step up to buy a 2-bdrm condo in the future when there’s no longer any bubble.
It can’t be DINK’s. They want more for their dough. It’s gotta be some single person.
If he gets away with only getting dinged $100K (+ interest), it would be a minor miracle.
Eh, whatever. It’s just his tuition payment for education at Finance U.
Do I get to be the first person to mention “Bertha?” Oh, you haven’t heard about her? OK. Never mind. If not her, it’ll be another one. We have several more months to go.
Bertha? I hardly knew ha.
the pembroke pines, ( south florida) article says that Equity Res bought the phase 2 & 3 for an avg 147k/unit.
Now, i been renting in phase 1 (which is converted to condos and ~50% sold) my rent is ~$1300.
Few months back i get the news that the condo has been bought by a colombian individual from Deaktor (who now sold other phases to Equity) and as per the mortgage paper that i got from this non english speaking buyer, it was sold in April 08 for ~330k what is almost the peak price in 2005. The mortgage lender is Everbank.
Now this to me sounds like a fraud. 330 k condo that is just sold in bulk for 146 k ,3 months later!!
I am thinking of contacting ever back to make sure mortgages are being paid. Or else i stop my rent to this character. What do you guys think??