Florida Home Builder’s Daughter Defaults on Sales Contract
Wendy Topkis, the daughter of Toll Brothers co-founder and Vice Chairman Bruce Toll, is walking away from a Florida condo.
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Archive for the 'Condominium Market' Category (Chronologically Listed)
Florida Condominiums Suffering High Foreclosure Rates
According to an independent study on foreclosures South Florida housing market is the second in the nation in foreclosures. The hardest hit of these tend to be condos & Downtown Miami area is feeling it.
Development in Downtown Tucson Arizona Slowed due to Housing Market
Greg Shelko, Director of Downtown Development, says that the public has been hearing about downtown revitalization for decades. Greg states “They’re tired of hearing about it and they want to see it, so we’re tired of talking about to we’re happy that some of our projects are finally coming out of the ground.”
Posted by Ryan Fiore on Nov 03 2007 under Affordable Housing, Arizona, Condominium Market, Home Builders
Anchorage Alaska’s Housing Market Cooling Off
The decline in home sales for Anchorage Alaska wasn’t particularly evident until spring of this year. This seems a little late since much of the country began to see sales slipping as early as the second half of 2005.
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Posted by Ryan Fiore on Oct 22 2007 under Affordable Housing, Alaska, Condominium Market, Housing Market
Home Prices Slide Creating Higher Market Inventory
A survey released today showed that 26% of US homeowners say that the value of their home has fallen over the last year. This number is above the previous peak of 24% that was released in a previous survey done in 1992.
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Condo Market Feeling the Mortgage Crunch
At Glen Waye Gardens Condominiums in Silver Spring, Md., 21 owners are more than 30 days behind on their condo fees. Two others have not paid since they bought their units, in April 2005 and September 2006, respectively. Both properties went into foreclosure.
Posted by Richard Barber on Apr 16 2007 under Condominium Market
Fewer Mortgages Used on Condos in Washington, DC Housing Market
The end of the condo craze is leaving real estate developers looking for other options.
Developers in the Washington housing market are dumping their proposals to build condominiums and switching to apartments as a glut of new and old condos slows sales.
In the latest move, a project in Takoma Park originally designed as condominiums, then canceled, is being reborn as an apartment complex.
Home builder Centex Homes started selling condo units for its Pavilions at Takoma in November, beginning in the low $200,000s for studios one block from the Takoma Park Metro station.
Last month, Centex Homes suddenly canceled the condo project, citing unfavorable market conditions and a lack of home loan demand.
The company sold the partially completed project Feb. 14 to Gables Residential, a McLean real estate investment trust.
“I guess the condo market got a little bit saturated,” said Ronny Salameh, Centex Homes’ division manager for Maryland and the District. “Until all that inventory goes away, it really slows down the condo market. It opens up for the rental market.”
When the housing boom peaked in 2005, condominiums made up 50 percent of the 354,000 new housing units being built nationally, up from 20 percent two years earlier, according to the National Association of Home Builders. This year, the association says condos will make up about 30 percent of new housing units.
Condominiums still are selling in the Washington area, but they are being bought by mortgage applicants who plan to use them as their primary residences instead of investment properties that offer a quick buck when they are re-sold a few years later.
“People are buying them for the correct reason today,” said Grant Montgomery, vice president of real estate research firm Delta Associates. “They’re a home first and an investment second. During the craze, I think that was inverted.”
The median price of condos rose 57 percent nationwide between 2001 and 2004, according to the National Association of Realtors. Single-family homes rose 25 percent in value in the same period.
To continue reading this article, click here.
SOURCE: The Washington Times
Posted by Jed Moss on Mar 02 2007 under Condominium Market, Washington (D.C.)
Prices in Palm Beach County Condo Market Continue Creeping Upward
Although single-family sales and prices posted significant declines over the month of January, the condo market in Palm Beach County, Fla., continues to show resilience, the Palm Beach Post reports.
In fact, Palm Beach County existing condos have now posted year-over-year price appreciation - except for a month when prices stayed the same - for 13 straight months.
In January, the Post reports, the median price of an existing condo rose 2 percent to $213,100 in January from $209,100 in January 2006.
By comparison, the median price of existing single-family homes in Palm Beach County was $388,000, down 1 percent from $393,700 in January 2006.
“With condos generally lower in cost, this market is getting attention from first-time home buyers and second home buyers,” said Nigel Fullick, vice president and branch manager for HomeBanc Mortgage in Palm Beach Gardens.
Across the U.S., new home buyers typically are 32 years old and earn about $58,000 a year, according to a recent study conducted by the National Association of Realtors.
Such buyers spend an average of $165,000 on their first home purchase, the association said - making Palm Beach County one of the worst destinations for housing affordability.
And there’s no relief in sight. Even with Florida mortgage rates remaining low, the average existing condo prices in PBC will rise to nearly $300,000 in 2009, economists believe.
One expert thinks the glut of inventory of unsold condos for sale in Palm Beach County could shoot up in a couple of years when all units currently under construction are reaching completion.
Existing condo prices for January also jumped in the nearby Treasure Coast - at three times the rate of Palm Beach County’s price increase, and to a higher median price, making it even more of a stretch for potential home mortgage applicants to make a purchase.
The median price of an existing condo in Martin and St. Lucie counties rose 6 percent in January, to $225,000 from $211,500 in January 2006. Treasure Coast condo sales, however, declined sharply in January compared with the same month a year ago - to 51 sales from 62, an 18 percent drop.
Statewide, as mortgage costs continue to price people out of the market, the median price of existing condos fell 1 percent, to $209,000. The number of condo sales throughout Florida fell 30 percent.
SOURCE: Palm Beach Post
Posted by Richard Barber on Mar 02 2007 under Condominium Market, Florida
Miami Condo Market Goes Bust
Two years ago, the Miami housing market was hot — red hot — and the hype was contagious.
When ABC News shot a story about it in the fall of 2005, it referred to it as “Boomtown Miami.” Old buildings were falling to make way for new condo towers that were selling out in just a few days.
“It was very exciting. It was an adrenaline rush,” Kari Fernandez, a condo sales agent, says. “We’re talking almost 1,000 units sold in a week.”
Investors, speculators, flippers, everyone seemed to be making significant profits in a matter of weeks.
Across the country, the real estate market has gone flat, but nowhere quite like Miami. Not that Miami is suddenly at a standstill: In the skies, flocks of building cranes compete with birds as condos race to completion. There is still a demand for Florida mortgage loans in the region.
Look around, and you can see a skyline transformed, with more than 100 new condo buildings now under construction, representing about 25,000 condo units due to be completed and delivered in the next 18 months or so.
But developers are avoiding new projects, focusing instead on completing construction and sales for all those buildings already under way. It’s a far cry from the booming Florida housing market of just two years ago.
A Cautionary Tale
Back when this was Boomtown — in 2005, when ABC News did that first story — there was a young real estate lawyer and speculator named Richard DeNapoli. He’d bought four condos worth $1 million with a $200,000 down payment. DeNapoli was banking on a $400,000 profit for his four condos.
Today, those condos are nearing completion, and his expectations are more modest.
DeNapoli has flipped his four units to other buyers, but for less than he’d hoped. Because he bought in early enough he’ll make a $275,000 profit — maybe. The worst-case scenario, he said, would be to break even or have to buy and then rent the units he speculated on because no home purchase loan applicant made an offer.
“It’s a stalemate right now,” DeNapoli said, “between buyers who have a lot of supply to look at and sellers who don’t want to budge on their asking prices.”
Back in 2005, Jack Winston, an analyst with Goodkin consulting, saw a boom based on shaky foundations.
“The equation is that you have speculators buying units, and they’re trying to flip their contract to other speculators who in turn are trying to flip their contract to other speculators,” he said at the time. “Somewhere along the line, you are going to run out of speculators.”
Now, Winston is saying: I told you so.
“Basically, we predicted at that time it was pretty close to a Ponzi scheme,” he says. “And the last person is the one who gets hurt. And that’s basically what happened here.”
Winston and others estimate that 70 percent of the Miami condo market was driven by those speculators in search of quick profits.
“Probably some time around September or November of 2005, it was as if someone turned off the spigot,” he says. “Since that time, new sales at condominium projects have come to a halt, practically a stand still.”
Whom To Blame?
Though there is an overabundance of supply, the eight hurricanes that battered this state in 2004 and 2005 can also take credit. Hurricane insurance rates have doubled, tripled. And with the inflation of property prices, so have property taxes.
To continue reading this ABC News report, click here.
Posted by Jed Moss on Feb 19 2007 under Condominium Market, Florida
Investor Drop-Off Doesn’t Slow Down Consumer Condo Demand
While condominium sales have stalled as investors flee, buyers continue to consider the condo market when faced with mortgage decisions.
At the International Builders show last week, builders said developers who jumped into the sector during the boom of the last three years are turning their attention back to rental apartments, where demand is expected to pick up.
But long-term demand for condominiums is expected to remain healthy, a new survey showed.
At the peak of the housing cycle in 2005, condominiums accounted for 50% of the 354,000 multifamily starts, up from 20% of the 340,000 starts in 2003. The National Association of Home Builders, which sponsors the show here, said it expects condos to make up just 30% of the projected 304,000 multifamily starts in 2007 and 328,000 starts in 2008.
“Most investors involved in condominium purchases in 2003 through 2006 were in a frenzy to buy into that market and as a developer we too moved into that craze,” said Bill Donges, chief executive of The Lane Co., an Atlanta-based multifamily developer. “But in the past year there has been a slowdown … and now we’re back to developing mostly apartments.”
However, this doesn’t mean condominiums have lost their allure to mortgage applicants, Donges said.
A 300-unit condo project his firm is developing in the Atlanta housing market opened Dec. 9 and 70 of those have been sold, he said, calling that a “normal sales pace” of 20 to 30 units per month. But it hardly compares to the 300-unit project in Hollywood, Fla., that sold out two years ago in just nine hours.
“The question is ‘are these units affordable?’ The upper end may not be moving but the lower end is still selling,” Donges said. “For the most part, condos were much more affordable than the houses that people could buy in these same areas. In urban areas, in mixed-use settings they still make sense. It’s a [housing affordability] issue, a lifestyle issue.”
Judd Boblin, executive vice president of The Novare Group, an Atlanta-based condo developer, said investors may have skewed the condo numbers in the last two years, but that has not lessened demand among his core group of home mortgage borrowers.
He said his sales and traffic in the first two months of 2007 were almost equal to the sales and traffic in those same months in 2004, before investors flooded the market.
“We’re active in Tampa, Nashville, Charlotte and Austin and we’re moving units there,” he said. “These are pieds-a-terre, second homes in urban locations and not resorts. There were a lot more investors looking at these in 2004 and 2005, but today most of our buyers come from the neighborhoods near the development.”
For nearly half of all condominium buyers, the decision to purchase is a lifestyle consideration, according to an NAHB surveyed released this week, with both young professionals seeking a first home close to urban amenities and older households wanting to downsize from suburban homes contributing to long-term demand.
“Condos are here to stay,” said Sharon Dworkin Bell, senior staff vice president for multifamily with the NAHB. “It’s a growing phenomenon across the country, in places large and small that have never had condos before.”
Click here to read the rest of this MarketWatch article.
Posted by Jed Moss on Feb 12 2007 under Condominium Market