Town hall draws crowd, questions about condos, HOAs

For more information go to www.BuyMiami.net

Here is what is most clear after last week's Sun Sentinel Town Hall Meeting on Condos & HOAs: Many owners and board members from community associations across South Florida are frustrated and fearful about finances, foreclosures and other festering issues.

And there is no denying that there is a need for solutions, and for help from lawmakers.

Approximately 250 people from Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties attended the Oct. 29 event sponsored by the Sun Sentinel and hosted by Nova Southeastern University in Davie. On. 27, the newspaper also held a Condos & HOAs online chat, which drew nearly 300 participants who posted about 180 questions.

Several key questions emerged over and over again. Many who participated in the chat and town hall wanted to know what potential reforms lawmakers plan to consider when they reconvene next year.

"We are caught in a terrible situation," said Diana Correll, of Deerfield Beach, whose sentiments were typical of many with foreclosure concerns. "A large number of properties in condo and homeowners associations have been taken over by banks, residents are just picking up and leaving their properties along with their commitments, and [there is the] added problem of people who continue to live in their properties while not paying maintenance fees.

"For answers, we turned to a panel of local experts: Jan Bergemann, president of Cyber Citizens for Justice; Donna D. Berger, executive director of Community Advocacy Network (CAN) and managing partner at Katzman Garfinkel Rosenbaum; Gary A. Poliakoff, attorney with Becker & Poliakoff P.A. and professor at Nova Southeastern University's law school; William Raphan, supervisor of the state Office of the Condominium Ombudsman in Fort Lauderdale; and State Rep. Julio Robaina, R-Miami.

What are the insurance requirements for condo owners?

Many voiced concerns about complex and confusing condo and HOA laws and insurance requirements.

Here is what you need to know, says Raphan: Unit owners are required to carry homeowners insurance with property loss assessment coverage of no less than $2,000 per occurrence, and the association must have an additional named insured and loss payee. The association requires proof of a currently effective hazard and liability policy from each owner, and may purchase a policy on behalf of the owner if he or she does not provide a valid certificate of insurance.

Unfortunately, the statutes suggest associations may purchase an insurance policy on behalf of a noncompliant owner, but do not say they must do so, leaving association boards -- and their attorneys -- to figure out what to do for themselves.

Who will fix foreclosure banking flaws?

Robaina promised, along with other lawmakers in the audience, to clean up this statute problem and others, including laws related to foreclosure processes. Many condo owners and homeowners complain that banks are allowed to forestall foreclosures and skip paying their share of maintenance fees.

Robaina said lawmakers are aware of widespread problems, and they are among potential reforms to look out for next legislative session. No details yet of what can be done, but possibilities include requiring banks to pay fees sooner than the 12 to 18 months it typically takes now to complete a foreclosure.

Source: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/realestate/condos/sfl-town-hall-condocol-110409,0,5747753.column
Daniel Vasquez can be reached at condocolumn@SunSentinel.com, 954-356-4219 or 561-243-6686. His condo column runs every Wednesday in the Local section and at SunSentinel.com/condos. Check out Daniel's Condos & HOAs blog for news, information and tips related to life in community associations at SunSentinel.com/condoblog. You can also read his consumer column every Monday in Your Money and at SunSentinel.com/vasquez.

Real Estate's Biggest Deals: Commercial Market

With values dropping, sales declining and credit scarce, it was not a good year to sell commercial real estate in South Florida.

Deals were getting done, but nowhere near the level of five or six years ago when buyers were plentiful and prices steadily climbed.

And things are likely to get worse as the economic crisis deepens.

Unemployment is growing, retailers are facing the worst holiday season in years, and the credit market remains a mess. With billions in short-term loans coming due, numerous commercial property owners across South Florida could be facing foreclosure.

Yet a wave of foreclosure could ultimately be the salvation of the industry as cut-rate properties valued on their income — rather than on investors’ optimistic expectations — hit the market.

“You are starting to see [commercial loans go in default] because owners cannot pay their loans,” said Steven Beauchamp, president of Mangrove Advisory Group.

“The first half of 2009 will be similar to the last half of 2008, with very little activity in commercial real estate,” said Gabriel Navarro, a principal with MMG Equity Partners in Miami. Navarro, along with partners Marcel Navarro and Martin Pico, buys, manages and develops commercial properties throughout South Florida.

“There is still a gap between sellers’ expectations of value and what buyers are willing to pay. The gap may be increasing, as many buyers are of the opinion that what you buy today will be less tomorrow.”

Sales of South Florida commercial properties plummeted in the first nine months of the year.

In Miami-Dade County, sales declined 62 percent to $1.68 billion during the period from January to September, compared with the same period a year ago, according to Real Capital Analytics.

Commercial sales in Broward County fell 80 percent to $747 million, and in Palm Beach County, they declined 53 percent to $932 million.

Cash deals

Unlike in the past, most recent large acquisitions didn’t include financing but were cash deals. Most of the buying was done by institutional investors with deep pockets such as pension funds and life insurers.

During the hot real estate market of the early- and mid-decade, many buyers were non-institutional investor groups that often borrowed as much as 95 percent of the property’s value.

Real estate experts said there are plenty of private equity funds with money to invest, but the potential buyers don’t like the prices.

Those short-term buyers want to earn at least a 20 percent profit when they sell in a few years, and to achieve that target, they need to buy low, said Stephen Nostrand, executive vice president in the investment sales division of Colliers Abood Wood-Fay in Coral Gables.

Beauchamp said investors are waiting on the sidelines for lenders to take title to distressed commercial properties.

They speculate that lenders — and possibly government agencies — will offer greater discounts because they will be more eager to unload the troubled assets.

That theory could prove true.

In 1989, Congress created the Resolution Trust Corp. to auction shopping centers, offices and condos taken back by savings and loans that later became insolvent.

Many of those assets were bundled and sold to investors at large discounts. The total bill to taxpayers was $87 billion, according to former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Many deals in 2009 will involve private owners of struggling shopping centers, office buildings and warehouses with rising vacancy rates and shrinking income, predicted real estate broker Neil Merin, with NAI/Merin Hunter Codman in West Palm Beach.

“In the next three to six months, we will see a lot of foreclosure sales,” he said. “But it won’t be like during the savings and loans crisis in the 1980s and 1990s, when 100 percent of the sales were foreclosures.”

Michael Stein, managing director of the Aztec Group in Coconut Grove, said lenders are increasingly seeking advice from his firm on how best to dispose of poorly performing properties with delinquent mortgages or loans that are worth a lot more than the depreciating collateral.

“We went to them looking for business a year ago, but they told us they didn’t have any nonperforming loans,” he said. “Now, we are getting calls from them requesting our services.”

J. Kingsley Greenland, president and chief executive officer of The Debt Exchange based in Boston, said lenders in South Florida are quietly selling loans — some that are current, others that are nonperforming — to investors.

Greenland, whose firm specializes in finding buyers for bad loans, said most of the troubled loans in South Florida are backed by properties whose owners loaded them up with debt during the run-up in prices over the last five years. He said some non-performing loans that have land as collateral are selling for 40 cents on the dollar.

“Banks are trying to get the problem behind them to go back to lending,” said Greenland, who declined to name lenders using his services to sell non-performing notes.

Some of the most prominent sales in 2009 are expected to involve properties whose owners have loans about to come due. Their options will be limited. In many cases the value of their properties have declined, and lenders willing to make loans are demanding that owners increase their equity in the building and boost their cash reserves.

Some real estate experts say it’s too early to forecast the direction the commercial real estate market will take next year. When President-elect Barack Obama takes office in January, he could launch policy changes that might significantly impact the market, said real estate broker Richard Matricaria, vice president of investments at Marcus & Millichap in Fort Lauderdale.

For example, Obama is proposing to boost taxes on capital gains — the profit earned when an asset is sold — from 15 percent to at least 20 percent. Hoping to cash in before the tax rate increases, long-term owners might be motivated to sell properties that have appreciated significantly.

“If the capital gains tax is to go into effect in 2010, sellers may be looking to cash out next year,” Matricaria said.

Obama is also proposing an additional stimulus package that could inject billions of additional dollars into the economy.

If the strategy is successful, retailers, restaurants and distribution companies might need more space. That would boost demand for shopping centers, warehouses and other commercial properties and help increase sales of those properties.

Falling values

For now, however, rising vacancies and falling rent rates are depressing the value of income-producing properties in South Florida.

Values could fall between 5 percent and 20 percent in the next 18 months, according to William Hemingway, co-managing director of real estate consultancy Integra Realty Resources in Miami.

Nationally, the Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Indices reported that commercial properties lost 11.2 percent in value in August compared with the same month in 2007.

Capitalization rates — a key valuation measure based on the ratio between cash flow and a rental property’s market value — are on the rise. The higher the cap rate, the lower the price of the property.

But because properties are generating less revenue, cap rates are increasing from 0.5 percent to 2 percent, reaching at least 7 percent in some Class A properties and more than 8 percent in less stellar properties, Hemingway said.

Values are likely to continue to drop as the region’s economy shrinks and unemployment rises. In Miami-Dade County, unemployment increased to 6.1 percent in September, up from 3.9 percent in September 2007. The jobless rate in Broward County hit 6 percent, up from 4.1 percent the year before. And in Palm Beach County, it rose to 7.3 percent, up from 5 percent, according to the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation.

As consumers cut back on spending, retailers and service providers are downsizing or closing shop.

As a result, office space vacancies in South Florida reached 11.4 percent in the third quarter of 2008, up from 10.4 percent in the first quarter of 2008, according to CoStar Group, a real estate research firm.

Retail vacancies jumped to 4.7 percent, up from 4.2 percent. Industrial vacancies jumped to 7.4 percent, up from 6.1 percent.

With rental rates flat, landlords are increasingly having to dangle upgrades or offer one or two months of free rent to attract or retain tenants.

Those expenses eat into operating income, said Doron Valero, managing partner of Global Fund Investments in Miami Beach.

“Why would you want to buy a property when it requires a lot of cash at a time when rents are not growing but going the other way?” he asked.

Lenders know rents are soft and take that into account when underwriting commercial loans, he said.

Until recently, lenders would look at the rent rates charged by a landlord and lend money based on the net operating income. Now, lenders compared a building’s rental rates with the prevailing rates.

“If the rent at your shopping center is $30 per square foot but the retail center across the street charges $25 per square foot, banks will go with the lower rent because they know you will have to lower your rent to attract new tenants when your current tenants move out,” he said.

As a result, lenders are willing to finance between 50 percent to 65 percent of the market value of a commercial property, down from 85 percent more than a year ago.

Dealmaking will remain slow until financing loosens up.

“There is not much trading of Class B and C properties because it is very hard to get financing,” said real estate broker Jay Caplin, who leads Cushman & Wakefield’s Capital Markets Group in Miami. “Lenders are being selective and lending to better quality properties.”

Navarro, whose family owns Navarro Pharmacies, said he had a hard time securing financing to buy a Class B shopping center for $22.5 million last month. Navarro obtained a short-term, $10 million loan to acquire a 94,816-square-foot shopping center in western Miami-Dade County, he said.

“Securing financing was difficult, to say the least, and securing attractive financing was nearly impossible,” he said. “We [ended up] securing a short-term bridge loan with Wachovia for a portion of the purchase price to close and will work on placing longer-term debt on the property in the next 30 to 60 days.”

Navarro is confident he will be able to refinance the shopping center with a long-term loan, because he already has 50 percent equity on the property.

Source: http://www.dailybusinessreview.com/news.html?news_id=51726

Paola Iuspa-Abbott can be reached at (305) 347-6657.

Foreign investors dominate in South Florida real estate purchases

In order to help his clients close on units at the luxury St. Tropez condominium in Sunny Isles Beach, developer Joe Milton recently put up $100 million of his company's cash to set up a mortgage company to fund loans.

That's because foreign buyers -- a key factor in the recent surge in home sales in South Florida -- are often locked out of the market if they don't have cash in hand.

``Sixty percent of our buyers are foreign,'' yet there are no loans being made to foreign nationals, said Milton, president and chief executive of J. Milton & Associates in Coral Gables.

While foreign cash buyers have certainly boosted sales, Milton wants to make sure financing isn't the issue keeping even more from owning a home in South Florida.

``International buyers are activating this market and reactivating sales,'' said Jenny Huertas, the international sales director for Condo Vultures, a Bal Harbour-based brokerage and consultancy.

Huertas returned two weeks ago from Bogotá where she conducted an investment seminar for about 50 people at Gran Estación, one of the city's largest shopping complexes. She's part of a growing caravan of real estate professionals trekking to Latin American and elsewhere to recruit new investors.

The spectacular meltdown of the region's once white-hot housing scene has caught the attention of global buyers who may have once considered U.S. real estate out of reach.

A weak dollar is also giving them an edge. In many areas, residential real estate is selling for 50 percent less -- and even lower -- compared to peak prices. On Friday, the euro closed at $1.473, a penny away from a 14-month high against the dollar.

``The Swiss, Spanish, groups from Italy and England who already own some stuff down here are seeing it as a good time to buy, leveraging the economy and the currency effect,'' said Mike Lapointe, vice president of Baybridge Capital Advisors in Miami.

The Florida Association of Realtors reported recently that the median home price in Miami-Dade fell to $190,900 in September, down 30 percent compared to a year ago. The median condo price fell to $132,900, a drop of 37 percent.

In Broward County, the median single-family home price fell to $200,000 from $259,300, a fall of 23 percent. The median condo price dropped to $78,000 from $129,000 last year, a 40 percent decline.

It adds up to a handsome opportunity for thousands of global buyers. ``Investors are aware that assets have never before been so depreciated in a country like America,'' said Gabriela Guimaraes, a partner with Integra Solutions, a Miami real estate consultancy that advises mostly Brazilian nationals.

Walter Defortuna, chairman of Fortune International Realty, said that for the first time in his 30-year career it's cheaper to buy an apartment in Miami than in major Latin American cities, such as Buenos Aires, Mexico City and large cities in Brazil.

The average price per square foot of a newly built condo in the stylish Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires is about $236, according to Ariel Szeinbaum, general manager of 4RentArgentina.com, which specializes in short-term apartment rentals and sales.

In Miami's Brickell area, new construction is selling for between $200 and $250 per square foot, although in other parts of South Florida the prices drop off significantly, especially on foreclosures and short-sales where lenders allow units to be sold for less than the mortgages owed against them.

``We were always two to three times more expensive than them, and today we are cheaper. They perceive that, no question,'' Defortuna said

Throughout the boom, foreign investors were wooed by developers and brokers seeking deposits and high sales commissions. They responded, and their presence helped drive development and prices to historic highs.

But this new wave is different, said Defortuna. They are buying for the long-term. ``There is no speculating for the short-term,'' he said.

Because the recession is global, brokers say the ranks of foreign buyers have been thinned, even though foreign sales still outpace the activity of U.S. buyers.

U.S. STOCK LOSSES

``The question is whether or not those buyers were hurt by the international economy or the economy in their particular country,'' said Jack Winston, a real estate analyst with Miami-based Goodkin Consulting. ``Even those foreign investors who are very sophisticated still had a lot of money in American securities, and they may have lost as much money in the stock market as a lot of Americans have.''

South Florida's appeal remains strong among foreign jet setters, who are drawn to the beachfront metropolis as much for its palm trees and fine weather as its United Nations-like cultural inclusivity. There's also a sense that the market may only get marginally worse before bottoming and mending

Almost one in four foreign sales in Florida this year have taken place in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach area, according to a July survey conducted for the Florida Association of Realtors.

South Florida was the most popular Florida market for Canadians, Latin Americans and Western Europeans, excluding Brits, who tend to prefer the Orlando-Kissimmee area, according to the survey.

LATIN AMERICANS TOP LIST

Latin Americans, not surprisingly, made up 52 percent of foreign buyers, with the next highest category being Europeans, who comprised 26 percent. The top countries of origin among South Florida's foreign buyers are Venezuela, Argentina and Canada.

More than half of these buyers are paying all cash, with European and Canadian buyers most likely to eschew financing. The loan programs that are available to them often come with terms deemed unacceptable.

Bernardo Manrique, a Venezuelan expatriate who owns Miami Realty Partners in Doral, says South Florida tends to benefit whether its closest neighboring nations are doing well or poorly economically and politically.

``Miami is a place that all people from Latin American find really nice. If Latin America is getting worse because of the economic conditions, Miami is the option. If Latin America is getting better and people are making money and economies are good, then Miami is an option,'' Manrique said.

A strong Brazilian economy, for instance, is piquing Brazilians' interest in residential and commercial properties for long-term investments, said Paulo de Melo, a partner at Integra Solutions, a full service real estate advisory firm that caters primarily to Brazilians.

``Brazilians are becoming much more sophisticated investors,'' de Melo said. ``They know they have to diversify investments and diversify their exposure out of Brazil a bit. They feel the growth is sustainable, but they know they have to hedge their bets.''

Venezuelans, on the other hand, are concerned with political instability and safety issues in the capital Caracas, said Manrique.

That's partly why Jorge Gomariz, a telecommunications professional who lives in Caracas, said he was looking to buy a second home in Coconut Grove or Key Biscayne in the next couple of months. The other reason, of course, are the steals.

``In some cases you can find [Class A] properties at very, very good prices. It's a great time to invest,'' Gomariz said. He said he plans to travel to Miami soon to choose a condo.

SEEKING INCOME ABROAD

In Israel and Spain, high real estate prices are driving investors to hunt for bargains for income-producing commercial and residential properties.

Dizengoff Trading Group, an Israeli real estate development and commodities firm, recently expanded to South Florida for that reason. It plans to target shopping centers and half-sold condo communities. In all, the firm plans to invest $100 million.

``We feel it is the right time to start building a portfolio. We might even see a little more deterioration, but I am quite positive that if we're looking on the curve of prices, we are closer to the bottom, especially on the residential side,'' said Ronen Saban, Dizengoff's U.S. region manager who is based in Boca Raton. Property in Israel is also extremely expensive as it is in other countries such as the Czech Republic, Austria and Romania, which are popular among Israeli second-home buyers, according to Ronen Rubin, the broker-owner of Rubin Group Real Estate.

THE 2-10 ADVANTAGE

``It's like 10 years [of] salary to achieve buying a condo there, but here today, with the prices so low, it's about two years of salary, which is very good,'' Rubin said.

Rubin, who primarily handles commercial real estate sales for mostly Israeli investors, said he recently had to hire a Hebrew-speaking real estate agent to deal with a new swell of Israeli residential buyers.

``There are not too many places in Israel where you can buy a nice condo at $60 a square foot. They have to pay $300 a square foot,'' Rubin said.

Tapping global markets, however, still requires connections and established relationships in countries where potential buyers abound.

Huertas, from Colombia, said she used to work for the former president of Fedelonjas, Colombia's equivalent of the National Association of Realtors and the group that helped coordinate the seminar two weeks ago.

Manrique's father owns one of the largest brokerages in Venezuela and that has been a pipeline to potential customers, Manrique said.

Defortuna also has long-established relationships with brokerages throughout Latin America. He rallied those resources recently to close out 1060 Brickell Avenue, a condominium that had been struggling with sales. Defortuna said at least 80 percent of the new unit buyers were foreign and 98 percent of all buyers paid cash.

INVESTOR'S GREEN CARD

Foreign buyers these days are also looking for an added return on their investments. Developers are taking advantage of a little-before-used visa program that makes it easier for them to get green cards when they invest between $500,000 and $1 million in projects that create jobs for U.S. workers.

Manrique is working with Sergio Pino's Century Homebuilders, which has launched an investor visa program to finish developing 350 acres at its Century Grand community in Doral. He was in Venezuela last month speaking to interested buyers.

``For them, to stay here legally and work legally, they have to have a visa, that's why the program is of huge interest to them. If you have the option to buy a house, but you don't have papers to live and work here, you start wondering what you're doing,'' Manrique said.

During the boom, real estate agent Evelina Dobyshava said Russians were snapping up condos in Sunny Isles Beach. When immigration plans fell through, she would simply sell for them. Now, she said, fear of not being able to land a green card is keeping many Russians from buying.

``They would rather come and rent something for $10,000 or $12,000 a month because still it will be much less money. Before it made sense because property was growing in price,'' she said.

A Russian developer, however, is hoping to launch its own investor visa program to raise money to finish the 50-story Solis Resort Spa & Residences project in Sunny Isles Beach. So far, 11 stories have been finished.

Dobyshava said she's confident Russian buyers will return. ``If they only have to invest half a million dollars,'' she said, ``I feel like I could sell those apartments in three days.''

Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/business/business-monday/story/1310794.html
BY MONICA HATCHER
mhatcher@MiamiHerald.com

Apartments: Equity Residential raises asset sale outlook to $900 million

Equity Residential, the largest publicly traded owner of apartments in the U.S., raised its forecast for property sales this year to $900 million as investor demand increased.

Nationwide sales of rental apartments climbed 12 percent in the third quarter from the previous three months to $3.6 billion, according to research firm Real Capital Analytics. Scarce credit and falling property values slowed the pace of deals beginning in 2008. Equity Residential’s long-standing strategy is to exit so-called second-tier markets and buy in cities including New York, Los Angeles and Washington.

The company began 2009 anticipating $700 million in property sales, Marty McKenna, a spokesman for the Chicago-based REIT, said in an interview today. It later boosted that forecast to $800 million, he said.

Proceeds “strongly position us to take advantage of any future opportunities to add high-quality properties to our portfolio,” Equity Residential Chief Executive Officer David Neithercut in a statement yesterday announcing quarterly results.

Billionaire investor Sam Zell established Equity Residential in 1969 and owns about 1 percent of the shares, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Pending acquisitions include a 326-unit apartment building in Pentagon City outside Washington for $99 million. Equity Residential may complete the deal as early as tomorrow, Neithercut said.

The REIT sold 24 properties totaling 4,620 apartments in the third quarter for an aggregate value of $381.1 million, the company said in a statement. It sold 47 properties this year for a total of $734.5 million.

Where the Deals Are

The sales were in suburban Denver, Vermont, Texas and Atlanta, according to McKenna.

The company is close to fully exiting markets in Texas and North Carolina, Chief Financial Officer Mark Parrell said in a conference call today.

The landlord has “no plans” to start new developments, Neithercut said. The REIT will likely report declining revenue from apartment leases into next year, he said.New lease rates are flat in New York and San Diego, and still falling in Los Angeles, Seattle and Phoenix, the company said.

The shares gained $1.50, or 5.4 percent, to $29.06 today in New York Stock Exchange composite trading

Source: Bloomberg News http://www.dailybusinessreview.com/news.html?news_id=58344

Tropical Transfer British executive buys penthouse for $8 million

For more information go to http://www.buymiami.net/

Chris Rokos, a secretive British hedge fund executive, has paid $8.17 million for a condo-hotel unit in W South Beach.

Rokos, a senior partner in the London-based investment firm Brevan Howard Asset Management, bought penthouse No. 5 in the 2201 Collins Ave. building. His acquisition of the 6,466-square-foot unit is the second-most expensive condo deal in Miami Beach in 2009, according to Miami-Dade records.

New York-based Alex Birkenstock’s $9.9 million purchase of a penthouse at Continuum South Beach in May is the top deal in Miami Beach this year.

Calls to Rokos, 38, at Brevan Howard’s London headquarters were not returned. Rokos’ assistant did not respond to an e-mail.

Rokos, who ranked No. 600 in a British newspaper's list of the wealthiest people in England and Ireland, closed on the all-cash purchase on Oct. 12. The sale was not recorded by Miami-Dade County until last week. The penthouse includes three bedrooms, 3½ bathrooms, three outdoor terraces and a pool, according to the W South Beach Web site.

The London native bought the unit from W South Beach development partnership 2201 Collins Fee, a company led by David Edelstein. W South Beach sales director Cathy Strafaci declined to comment on the sale.

Rokos is the second high-profile buyer of a W South Beach penthouse since July. Professional basketball star Amar’e Stoudemire paid $5.58 million for the 4,841-square-foot penthouse No. 3 on July 10. Stoudemire also paid cash.

The 312-room hotel portion of W South Beach opened July 2. Closings on the 409 residential units began earlier this year. The units were listed from $800,000 to $15 million.

At the time of the Stoudemire deal, about 80 percent of the condo-hotel units were under contract. About 40 units have closed, according to broker Kevin Tomlinson of Esslinger Wooten Maxwell, although only 33 are listed in Miami-Dade County property records.

“It is a struggle for any developer to get any buyer to close,” said Tomlinson, who was not involved in the Rokos deal. “It is especially hard for somebody with a project that is not financeable,” Tomlinson said. Lenders have avoided funding mortgages for properties such as condo-hotels since the onset of the financial crisis and recession.

Project developer Edelstein, principal of Tristar Capital, said in an e-mail that new unit contracts signed in the last two weeks total more than $20 million. Tristar co-owns the hotel with RFR Realty. Edelstein said deals expected to close in the next few weeks total more than $30 million.

“We have experienced a substantial increase in global demand for our units. ... We are projecting more than $100 million in closings by year end,” Edelstein said.

OVERSEAS BUYERS

Tomlinson was not surprised the W South Beach sales staff found a buyer in the United Kingdom. Helped by a weak dollar, much of the interest in Miami Beach condos is coming from Europe, he said. The U.S. dollar has declined 7.1 percent against the euro since the beginning of the year, according to Lydian Private Bank.

Developers of condo projects north of Fifth Street are losing potential international buyers to competing projects south of Fifth, Tomlinson said. Of the 13 most expensive condo sales in Miami Beach this year, 11 were at Apogee South Beach at 800 S. Pointe Drive.

“These buyers typically want to go to the south of Fifth neighborhood, which is doing very well,” he said. “With Apogee, the minimum [asking price] is $3.5 million. That exclusivity attracts the creme de la creme. At Continuum, the minimum buy-in is $650,000.”

CONDO-HOTEL TREND

Condo-hotel projects became popular after the 9/11 terror attacks when financing for conventional hotels dried up. Condo-hotel developers found they could finance construction with deposits from unit buyers.

Condo-hotels developed a bad reputation as would-be unit buyers struggled to find financing during the financial crisis, the real estate downturn depressed prices of all residential properties, and a decline in tourism cut into hotel revenues.Lawsuits against condo-hotel developers spiked as many buyers sought to recover deposits.

“These condo-hotels were touted as a great new form of ownership and investment vehicle,” Tomlinson said. “A lot of people bought these under the assumption that they would be great investments and could be financed. Now the proof is beginning to be seen in the pudding, and all of that is changing.”

Condo-hotels have become an afterthought in a tight lending environment, Tomlinson said. A loosening of the capital markets would not be enough to persuade banks to consider condo-hotel lending.

“Banks don’t even want to finance a condo, let alone a condo-hotel,” he said. “I don’t see it changing with an opening of the credit markets.”

Typically, buyers of condo-hotel properties sign a management deal to put the unit into a rental pool. During the condo boom earlier this decade, condo-hotel managers would require such agreements. But with a dwindling group of prospective condo-hotel buyers, managers have become more flexible.

Rokos could choose to hire an outside broker to rent the unit rather use W's rental program. Starwood Hotels manages the condo-hotel program at W South Beach.

Eric Kalis can be reached at (305) 347-6651. 2201 Collins Ave. photo by A.M. Holt October 29, 2009By: Eric Kalis 2201 Collins Ave.

Pending Sale for 1000 Venetian Way # TH 105 Miami Beach, FL for more information go to www.buymiami.net

Enjoy spectacular sunsets & wide bay views from this spacious 4-level sun-filled Venetian Island waterfront townhome..Larger than tax rolls. High ceilings, 4 bed/3.5 bath with over 4,000 sq.ft. of living area + private roof top terrace with hot top and amazing water views!!Dramatic staircase, Elevator, 2 living areas, formal dining, electric shutters. This is a great family home ideally located near South Beach, Lincoln Rd, The Performing Arts Center, AA Arena and Downtown.

For more information go to www.buymiami.net

Can You Find A Great Property Deal On Craigslist?

FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO WWW.BUYMIAMI.NET

Today you can find just about anything on Craigslist. As a potential Real Estate Investor, did you ever notice that Craigslist is divided into cities? This can be a big drawback when you are searching for properties for sale.
Did you know there is a feature on Craigslist that allows you to search multiple cities at one time? The featured site is called http://www.Craigshelper.com but is now very recently being redirected to http://www.searchtempest.com (Thank you to James Lyon at Vista Pacific Realty for pointing this out).
With Craigshelper all you need to do is type in the zip code where you would like to search for property. It also gives you the ability to specify the radius of the search.
The Ad Notifier feature for Craigslist will alert you when something is posted on Craigslist that fits your specifications. Ad Notifier for Craigslist will even text your cell phone when a match is found. 




What really is critical to get the tools to work is to be sure to use the best search terms. Avoid using a simple term like “house for sale” try using creative search terms that locate sellers. 


The following search terms may be helpful for finding people that need to sell their property:




Owner will finance
Owner Desperate
Motivated seller
House must go
Homeowner must sell
All offers welcome
Seller will carry second
Consider all offers
Terms available
OBO, Or Best offer
Below appraised value
Will sell for what is owed
Lease Option
Rent to own

It is amazing what you can find by thinking creatively when you are looking to purchase property.

Source: Eddie Perez http://activerain.com/blogsview/1292070/can-you-find-a-great-property-deal-on-craigslist-