South Florida headlines

[Urban_Legend]

^Dang! Congrats for Miami. With the boom going on, I can't imagine that another Super Bowl would make that much of a difference. I know it stepped up some projects in downtown Jax, but Miami's coming along nicely as it is, lol.

[Aessotariq]

This is great... Don't forget that Dolphins Stadium (I hated the name "Pro Player") is expected to get a makeover, with hotel, entertainment, retractable roof, etc... I doubt it will be ready by 2010, the roof definitely not so, but still.

[EbonyGardens]

Miami's gonna get the Super Bowl twice, good job guys

[123]

why did they stop posting on this thread. theres alot of stuff happening in miami!

[wally2169]

Not encouraging at all....

MIAMI - The condo vulture loves raw concrete floors. They smell of desperation.

And desperation is what Peter Zalewski's newest venture feasts on.

The real-estate broker launched Condo Vultures Realty last year near Miami, the nation's most glutted condo market, to prey on speculators drowning in monthly payments for condos they never intended to own and -- especially if the floors are unfinished -- cannot rent.

And he soon may land in Orlando, where he smells many vulture opportunities.

"We're much like the Coast Guard," Zalewski said. "They look for boaters in trouble. We look for investors who need to be rescued."

Zalewski, 36, is among a growing legion of entrepreneurs and opportunists who are circling Florida in hopes of turning despair into dollars by snapping up overbuilt condos at fire-sale prices.

"Every large investment firm you can think of has been in touch," said Mark Zilbert, president of Zilbert Realty Group, whose Condo Flip site on the Internet is soliciting sellers interested in unloading their units in bulk deals.

"Right now, I have a group of doctors who put up $10 million and said, 'Let's go shopping.' "

Anxious investors also are helping lawyers such as Michael Schlesinger launch a new subspecialty: contract cancellations.

Schlesinger's phone rings a few times a day with prospective clients hoping to wiggle out of purchase contracts -- and retrieve their deposits -- before they have to close on units they had hoped to flip for a tidy profit. Among them is a Colombian doctor who put down nearly $1.3 million on 12 condos.

The Miami lawyer need only look out his office window off Brickell Avenue to know the pace will pick up: Eight new condos towers are rising nearby.

So far, Schlesinger has negotiated settlements on "dozens" of condos by arguing that developers didn't deliver what was promised. He also has filed one class-action suit for 20 buyers who say their building is late, and a handful of individual civil complaints.

One was for Lucy Blanco, 44, a computer programmer who thought she was getting the "best deal in town" when she put down $93,000 on a $465,000 one-bedroom, bayfront condo last year.

Similar apartments are now selling for less, and Blanco, convinced that her unit is smaller than the 951 square feet she paid for, wants out of the deal. "No one likes to buy something that's decreased so much," she said.

Zalewski, a former journalist who analyzed South Florida real estate, hunts for owners squeezed between falling prices and mounting monthly payments who are willing to sell cheap "just to stop the bleeding."

To find them, he created a database to track properties that have been on the market more than 100 days and dropped at least $100,000 in price. Today, it contains more than 1,700 entries.

He uses the list to pinpoint clusters of distressed sellers and pit them against one another, as he did for two doctors who recently bought a two-bedroom, 2.5-bath, bayfront condo for $420,000. It had been listed for $495,000 and appraised for $550,000, but the owners, a mother and daughter, were desperate to unload their money-losing investment in Blue, a tower where nearly a third of the units are for sale.

Since June, Condo Vultures has received more than 600 queries from bargain shoppers hailing from California to Colombia. Some are interested in buying near Walt Disney World.

Zalewski is talking to an Orlando brokerage, Time Realty, about opening a second Condo Vultures office by year's end. His primary hunting ground: MetroWest, where hundreds of apartments converted to condos remain unsold.

Zalewski figures his firm, now hiring 10 new agents in South Florida, has a life span of about three years. Until then, he sees many opportunities for buyers -- and renters, too.

"There is so much inventory available, renters are turning into vultures themselves," he said. "They see this as the opportunity to live the South Florida dream at a discounted price subsidized by greedy speculators."

[tombarnes]

An interesting article, to be sure, but also more than a bit depressing. South Florida is going to have more than a bit of a problem on its hands fairly soon. I would like to think that this is not the case, but over-building amy soon catch up with reality. In some respects, the demand for waterfront living may see the area throgh, but the pace really needs to slow down.

BTW, you may want to replace the article itself with a link to the article.

[tombarnes]

Miami Ponders Observation Wheel

A proposal for an observation wheel similar to London's Eye could be built at the Port of Miami. As this is a project which would be privately funded (except for the land), I don't see a major problem with building this. Whether or not it would prove to be nearly as popular as London's wheel remains to be seen.

Hotel-Online- The Miami Herald

[Wild Style]

This comment from that article is priceless:

kill the middle class..

make homes nobody can afford...

raise minimum wage every 12 years...

give the rich tax breaks...

make property taxes more than the home cost...

make insurance more than the home cost..

make condos in the thousands....

and sell them for a cool million...

21 million for the penthouse...

NOW TAKE A LOOK AROUND....

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU HAVE A IMMIGRANT NATION..

im loving every minute of it to the point, where im having a glass of wine.

everything that was out of my reach is now out of yours.

nothing is as soothing as watching this market fall to hell.

next time think of the middle class, WE MAKE AMERICA,

not greedy ,rich, republicans who took it all away.

link

[tombarnes]

For another look at where all of this money is coming from and where it's going,take a glance at this morning's George Will's piece in the Washington Post.

[bulldogger]

Does anyone have a drawing for the new Marlins Stadium that is taking over the Orange Bowl? Are there any updated photos of the Orange Bowl demolition? I would think that it is close by now.