MLS, IDX, and other Real Estate News

Solar Energy - Enjoy Landscaping with Beautiful Solar Lighting

2011-08-16T15:56:00.000-07:00

One aspect of solar energy that has quickly caught on happens to be solar landscape lighting. This has become a popular option for the lighting needs of gardens and yards. Since they are low cost, easy to install, and require little to no maintenance, they definitely have a lot to offer. If you want to add some lighting to your current landscaping, here are some helpful tips that will help you make the most of your solar lighting options.

Install in Areas with Plenty of Sunlight

If you are going to use solar lighting for your landscape lighting needs, one of the most important things you need to do is to ensure that you install them in areas where they get plenty of sunlight. This ensures that the lights get enough sunlight to charge up the batteries so your lights will shine all night long. Of course, if you really need to use lights in an area that is shaded from the sun, one option is to install the light in one place while installing the solar panel in an area that gets plenty of sun. Just keep in mind that this will require you to have a wire between the light and the solar panel.

Choose the Style You Need

Another thing you need to remember is to choose the style that you need from all the options you have on outdoor solar lighting. Here are some of the styles that are currently available for you to choose from:

- Patio Lights - Lights that are installed permanently on a patio or a deck
- Solar Spotlights - Used to accent a specific area or object
- Motion Sensor Lights - When motion is detected, the area is lighted for a few minutes
- Hanging Lights - Lights that can be mounted near entrance ways, such as the front door or back door of your home
- Low Fixture Lights - These lights are near the ground, making a perfect option for driveways and around landscaping borders. Taller options are also available to use around your patio or walkways.
- Decorative Lights - These lights can are designed to be decorative and are found in many shapes, such as statues, frogs, and more.

Consider Different Finishes to Match Your Landscaping

When you are choosing the lights for your landscaping needs, you'll find that solar lights come in a variety of different finishes as well. You'll want to choose a finish that will go with the rest of the landscaping on your property. The lights should blend right in with everything else. Some of the available finishes you can choose from include stainless steel, plastic, verdigris, and copper.

Solar outdoor lighting is definitely a great option for your landscaping or gardening needs. They offer a cost effective way to light the outdoors around your home. The great thing is that they are easy for you to install. They can easily be attached to walls or patios and other options can be simply pushed right into the ground. Instead of paying a big electric bill to light up your landscaping, go with low cost lighting that makes use of solar energy. The fixture are reasonably priced and you'll definitely save money on your electric bill.

Daylight Basement House Plans

2011-03-06T15:10:00.000-08:00

Contrary to common belief, it isn’t necessary that a beautiful house can only be built on a flat piece of land. Daylight basement house plans, also known as walkout basement house plans, are an option if you own a sloping lot and would like to make the most of the buildable space available.

The slope can be utilized in your house plan in the form of a bright, fully functional, and easily accessible basement. Daylight basement house plans are designed for lots which typically slope towards the rear and/or one or two sides. A variety of home styles can be built on a sloping lot which can include one as part of the design. Daylight basements offer a number of benefits, such as:

1. Direct access to the outside

Most daylight basement house plans provide access to the rear or side yard from the basement, giving you a very convenient direct connection from the basement to the outdoors. The homeowner can leave the house without entering a higher floor. The basement can open out to a patio or a covered porch or a backyard garden.

2. Warmer and more comfortable than below-ground basements

A walkout basement is much warmer and comfortable than below-ground basements because they are partially above the ground and have access to direct sunlight. Daylight basements are usually filled with full-size windows which create a wonderfully open feeling, allowing the warm sunlight to spill in and providing a great view of the backyard at the same time. There are also fewer problems of dampness and molds.

3. Bonus multi-purpose space

Walkout basement plans are also great for people looking for additional space for living, sleeping, recreation or a multitude of other activities. They can serve as a wonderful private space for a home office or business because the separate entryway prevents traffic from interfering with your family life. They can even be used as garages or stores.

4. Expansion options

Daylight basements are ideal because they provide a separate, but attached, living space. They also offer an extra external door that allows occupants to enter and leave the house without passing through the upper living area. They are also ideal for those who want to rent it out to help pay off mortgage, or make a separate living area for a member of the family. Design accommodations in a walkout basement house plan can also include split foyers and split level homes.

5. Great resale value

Houses with daylight basements are more desirable to potential buyers as opposed to those with the standard below-ground basements because of all their aforementioned benefits.

They are almost always evaluated considerably higher because the walkout basement can be claimed as part of the total available square footage. Therefore opting for a daylight basement house plan would increase the value of your house substantially.

The ability to tailor house plans to the terrain is a central part of what makes a good architect. The ability to make usable space out of nothing is a useful tool to be able to use in design. A walkout basement is just one example of that.

Automate Your Budget Calculations

2011-02-09T02:35:00.000-08:00

In order to manage your budget effectively, you need to understand your expenses and income. Once you understand these, you will be in a position to establish spending limits for your next budget. This approach will enable you to save money by cutting down overspending over time.

A common mistake is to develop a budget without paying attention to existing expenses. This approach is flawed because it means that you will be repeating the same mistakes you made in the past. In order to use money effectively, you need to manage your fixed and variable expenses in accordance with your income.

With many transactions taking place during the month, it can become complicated to record all of them at the end of a given month. It is therefore advisable to use an approach in which you record transactions on a daily or weekly basis instead of putting it off until later.

That way you can record everything while it’s fresh in your mind. This will save time in the long run as you won’t be racking your brains trying to think what a particular expense was for. Nobody wants to sit down at the end of each month and go through finances. Doing it as and when it a much better idea. Money management is VERY important if you plan on not going broke.

Using a spreadsheet can make it easy to manage your finances. A spreadsheet will enable you to carry out multiple calculations quickly and accurately. The idea is to automate the balancing of your budget as much as possible, which takes more legwork out of doing the finances.

The tools available in spreadsheets provide useful money management assistance if you know how to use them. It will perform most of the calculations for you, and provide you with all the information you need to understand your expenses fully.

Depend on what software you have, you can create templates which will do the adding and subtracting for you each month. That means even less work.

Spreadsheet software also allows users to develop graphical representations of their financial trends. This way you will be able to judge each expense category in detail. You can also use it to compare your expenses across different months of the year and keep a log of your transaction history to understand your spending habits.

The key to automating finance management is to maintain the record of transactions continuously and consistently. Once you have a routine, and a template set up you can just enter amounts and let the software do the work.

Eventually you will be able to process your transactions within a few clicks every time you want to view your running balances instantly. This approach will give you the comfort of knowing that your checkbook is always balanced and you are always in control of your finances.

Effective budgeting requires a thorough understanding of expenses and income limits. In this regard, it always helps to establish spending limits for each expense category. These spending limits act as 'ceilings' to help you judge how much of your limit you have exhausted for each expense category as the month goes by.

Denver Short Term Housing Market Best of Those Outside California

2010-10-07T15:57:00.000-07:00

According to a recent report by real estate website Zillow.com, Denver properties gained an average of 2.5 percent in Q1 2010 over the same time last year. Denver short term housing made up some of that increase, with rental incomes being very sought after as people struggle to get mortgages.

The report gives an overview of market values in metropolitan areas across the country and is generally a good indicator of the real estate market at the time. Many analysts can be skeptical of Zillow’s data, but some have said that this latest report seems in line with other national reports, such as S&P Case-Shiller and government reports.

Denver ranked sixth in the table of increases, with four cities showing bigger increases than Denver. All in California, San Diego was No. 1 at 7.3 percent, San Francisco was up by 5.9 percent, San Jose, 5.6 percent, and Los Angeles, 5.5 percent. Boston home prices rose by 3.2 percent. Miami and Fort Lauderdale showed the biggest decline, falling by 15.2 percent, while Phoenix homes prices fell by 11.8 percent.

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Denver weathered the storm better than many cities, which is why it’s showing such a strong response now. The California cities lost so much value over the past couple of years that the only way really was up. That said, there were still many foreclosures, with some realtors renaming areas “foreclosure alley” instead of tornado alley. That’s where Denver’s short term housing strength is coming from.

There is considerable demand from families who have either lost their home or are waiting for the recovery before buying one. These shorter-term tenants are supporting the rental market and creating a need for affordable rented accommodation. This in turn causes landlords to buy more property, which feeds in to the increase in property values.

These numbers will also include the tail end of the tax credit scheme which boosted property sales considerably in the first part of the year. That expired for homes under contract after April, so it will be interesting to see if the figures for Q3 and Q4 continue the trend or dip. Many investors were openly buying while they were receiving tax credits and planning to stop once it no longer applied.

It’s still a very mixed picture across the country as you can see so any small increase should be taken with much more appreciation than would normally be the case. The rental market is experiencing something of a resurgence and many Americans re-evaluate whether home ownership should really be part of the American dream.

The recovery is going to be a long one, so Denver short term housing is likely to see a gradual increase in demand. At least until the economy stabilizes and people stop losing their jobs. For now, many people are renting their homes. Content to let someone else worry about mortgages and the other expenses that go hand in hand with home ownership.

Florida's long road to recovery

2010-02-15T14:09:00.000-08:00

When John Kanas arrived in South Florida last May as the savior of the state's largest homegrown bank, the $12.8 billion-asset BankUnited in Coral Gables, he did so with a wad of private-equity cash in his back pocket, a cushy loss-sharing agreement with regulators and a healthy dose of realism that "even our worst fears about the Florida market would be overly optimistic."

Nine months later, with real estate values still plummeting and unemployment in Florida approaching 12 percent, the former head of North Fork Bancorp has seen little to change his outlook for the state's banking industry. Eleven more banks have failed in Florida since BankUnited went down, for a total of 16 since mid-2008, and Kanas predicts that as many as 100 more banks and thrifts will fail there over the next couple of years. "The market is just devastated," Kanas says. "The patient is on life support."

The old banking adage says first-in, first-out: Markets that get into trouble first in a cycle often lead the rest of the country out. But Florida, among the states hit earliest and hardest by the bursting of the housing bubble and the ensuing financial chaos, could well prove to be the exception to that rule.

At the end of the third quarter, noncurrent loans for all Florida-based banks and thrifts averaged 6.71 percent - more than double their levels a year earlier, according to SNL Financial. The $2.5 billion-asset Capital City Bank Group in Tallahassee is widely regarded as one of the strongest, most conservatively run bank companies in the state, yet in the third quarter its return on equity was minus 2.15 percent and nonperformers equaled 7.25 percent of assets, according to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data.

"The best-run banks in the state are sitting with problem assets in the high single-digit rates and no profits, and we don't have a sense the problems have peaked yet," says Joe Fenech, an analyst at Sandler O'Neill & Partners LP. "Things are very tough."

The real estate bust is radically altering the Sunshine State's banking landscape. Large out-of-state banks are still the dominant players (though some of the names have changed), but a wave of failures is opening the door to new competitors like BB&T Corp., New York Community Bancorp, Iberiabank Corp. in Louisiana and Hancock Holding Co. in Mississippi, all eager to build market share on the cheap in what is still the country's fourth-largest deposit market.

BB&T, for example, more than quadrupled its market share in the state with its FDIC-assisted deal for the $25 billion-asset Colonial Bank of Montgomery, Ala., adding 201 branches and $10.4 billion of deposits. New York Community gained 24 branches in Florida after acquiring the failed AmTrust Bank of Cleveland and, with an eye toward beefing up deposits, could be scouting for more deals there. And Iberiabank, which already had a small presence in Jacksonville, moved into two new Florida markets when it bought two failed banks - Orion Bank in Naples and Century Bank of Sarasota - on the same day in November, giving it $3.1 billion of assets, $2.5 billion of deposits and 34 offices in the Sunshine State.

In a conference call with analysts and investors a few days after closing the deals, Iberiabank president and CEO Daryl Byrd explained his thinking. "When everyone wanted to be in Florida and pay five times book for overvalued assets, we expanded in Louisiana and Arkansas," he said. "We believe this is the right time, price and risk structure to enter these Florida markets."

Even Kanas, who says a full recovery could be years away, is aggressively recruiting talent from rival banks and has made no secret of his intentions to acquire more failed banks in Florida. "We believe there's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us to augment this franchise and build a statewide institution," he says.

It helps, of course, that the FDIC is covering the lions' share of failed banks' loan losses. Even at fire-sale prices, buyers wouldn't be so eager to bulk up in Florida if it meant getting stuck with piles of bad real estate loans.

But, for all its problems, bankers are drawn to the state for the same reasons retirees are: abundant sunshine, beaches and golf courses, no state income tax and, these days, very affordable real estate. Though population growth has slowed considerably from when 1,000 people were moving there a day, Florida is still on pace to surpass New York as the country's third most-populous state some time this year.

"Florida has more than 18 million people, and the last time I checked it was still warm in January," said BB&T CEO Kelly King, explaining the decision to acquire Colonial. "For baby boomers looking for someplace to retire, the values have been so deeply discounted, it's inconceivable to me that Florida will not come back strongly."

The availability of cheap money in the early- and mid-2000s fueled an explosion in building activity, real estate prices ballooned, and speculators descended. "Suddenly you had the New York X-ray technician who wanted to buy five condos like his buddy did and flip them for a profit," says Alex Sanchez, CEO of the Florida Bankers Association. "When the music stopped, he got caught without a chair."

Locals caught the fever, too. Bill Valenti, CEO of the $340 million-asset Florida Gulf Bancorp in Fort Myers, recalls an otherwise sane customer visiting his office in 2006 seeking a $1 million credit line to buy lots in a high-end subdivision. "He was going to pay $72,000 for each lot and flip them to out-of-state investors," says Valenti, who passed on the credit line. "Today, those lots are selling for less than $10,000."

Fallout from Florida's real estate collapse has caused plenty of pain outside the state. National City Corp. of Cleveland was forced to sell itself to PNC Financial Services Group of Pittsburgh in late 2008, two years after acquiring two Florida real estate lenders at the market's peak and taking huge write-downs on their portfolios. Colonial, which placed a big bet on Florida's housing market, was seized by the FDIC after recording a $600 million loss in the second quarter.

Other struggling regional players, including Synovus Financial Corp. of Columbus, Ga., Fifth Third Bancorp in Cincinnati and South Financial Corp. in Greenville, S.C., can trace much of their asset-quality problems to real estate loans they inherited through acquisitions of Florida banks. And the single biggest reason Corus Bancshares of Chicago failed in November was because 93 percent of its $1.03 billion in loans to south Florida condominium developers were delinquent.

"The irony is, three or four years ago, all investors wanted out of any large bank was a presence in Florida," says Sandler analyst Kevin Fitzsimmons. "Now, it's an absolutely toxic market for banks, and every one of those institutions has been hurt. They enjoyed the boom, and now they're paying the price for the bust."

At times, it seemed the exuberance knew no bounds. Integrity Bank in Juno Beach and Hillcrest Bank in Naples, which both failed, were run by out-of-staters who lacked local-market knowledge - a common affliction, locals say.

A material loss review by the FDIC's inspector general found that $276 million-asset Freedom Bank in Bradenton collapsed because management, led by a CEO with a past failure on his resume, aggressively pursued "high-risk CRE loans with inadequate loan underwriting and a lack of ... risk-management controls."

A prompt corrective action order from the Federal Reserve, issued just days before its November failure, found that the $2.7 billion-asset Orion made $60 million in "unsafe and unsound" loans to "straw borrowers," who used the money to buy bad assets from the bank, then followed that up with a $15 million loan used to purchase the company's stock-all after the bank had blown past its legal lending limit. The Fed demanded that the board oust the CEO, but the point was moot when the bank was seized four days later.

The mood in the banking community now is a mix of tension and gloom, tempered by hopes that the worst might have passed. At industry conferences this past fall, William Smith, Capital City's CEO, heard bankers from other states "preaching the same story we were preaching in January. Our conversation is about nine months ahead of theirs."

Smith says he sees clear signs of market improvement - firming property prices, a pick-up in new-home sales, "and brisk and robust activity" in some small-business sectors. "We still have a ways to go. This was deep and severe," he says. "But we're seeing signs that we've found the bottom of the pig's belly, and things are beginning to turn."

The pace of the state's rebound will have a big impact on the industry as a whole. As of June 30, seven out-of-state players controlled more than half of the state's branches and 57.5 percent of its $401 billion of its deposits. "It's such a crucial battleground state, we won't see true normality [nationally] until we see a recovery in Florida," says Ken Thomas, an independent bank consultant in Miami.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., which had just 10 Florida offices pre-crisis, has been changing the signage on more than 200 acquired Washington Mutual branches as quickly as possible, to escape the taint of the biggest bank failure in U.S. history. Wells Fargo & Co., which jumped from virtually zero to a 16 percent market share with its deal for Wachovia Corp., is moving slower in converting 700-plus former Wachovia branches, but has already brought its pricing models and rate discipline to the state.

PNC didn't do anything but private banking in Florida until it bought National City, which had 107 branches along the Treasure Coast north of Ft. Lauderdale, but now it is intent on growing there. "We want to double our size here in the next four or five years," says Craig Grant, regional president for PNC's Florida operations.

To be sure, the crisis has been a boon for some local banks. Florida Gulf has high regulatory ratings and capital levels and grew assets by $45 million in the first half of 2009 as customers moved loans and deposits to banks they deemed to be safer. "Honestly, it's been good for us," Valenti says.

The $464 million-asset Stonegate Bankin Ft. Lauderdale, earned $616,000 in the third quarter. It raised $14.2 million of capital in September, and struck an FDIC-assisted deal a few weeks later for the $65.5 million Partners Bank, giving Stonegate a presence in Naples. "It's a no-cost way to enter new markets," says CEO David Seleski.

Perhaps no local bank is better positioned to capitalize on the upheaval than Bank-United. Regulators were so desperate for a savvy buyer that they allowed Kanas to partner with some of the biggest names in private equity and agreed to cover 80 percent of losses on the first $4 billion in loans and 95 percent beyond that.

The $900-million deal implicitly guarantees BankUnited's survival - and Kanas is using it as a marketing tool for luring jittery customers and bankers alike. "Imagine feeling good about your job again, and not dreading your customers' calls of complaints," he intones in a recent full-page ad in American Banker encouraging individual bankers to leave their employers and bring client relationships to BankUnited.

"There are thousands of frustrated bankers in this state who are stuck inside of institutions that have problems that are not allowing them to do business," Kanas says. "They're anxious to join a bank that has excess capital and is on good footing with the regulators."

Well-capitalized out-of-state players, like Hancock, are also poised to grow in Florida. In December, Hancock tripled its assets in the state, to $2.4 billion, with a deal for the failed Peoples First Community Bank of Panama City, and after raising $175 million in October, it has the capital to do more deals there. "We see this as an opportunity to beef up our franchise there and get well-positioned for the future," Carl Chaney, Hancock's president and CEO, says.

Like Kanas, Chaney eventually sees Florida overtaking Georgia as the state with the most bank failures. Thomas, the bank consultant, estimates that more than 40 state banks are on the FDIC's "problem list," with the number expected to grow as regulators step up enforcement efforts. The agency recently opened a 500-person "temporary satellite office" in Jacksonville to deal with the anticipated workload.

The biggest impediment to a recovery is residential real estate. Prices have plummeted in some markets by more than 50 percent since 2006, and despite signs of stabilization, "the entire state is probably looking at another 5 percent drop in value, relative to its peak," says Richard DeKaser, a well-regarded housing economist with Woodley Park Research in Washington.

The drop in values has been accompanied by a crippling recession - the state's unemployment rate in November was 11.5 percent, up from 7.2 percent a year earlier - fostering more defaults. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, 12.18 percent of the state's 3.5 million mortgages were delinquent at the end of the third quarter, compared to 9.94 percent nationally. Another 12.74 percent were somewhere in the foreclosure process, versus a national rate of 4.47 percent.

Even relatively stable markets, such as industrial Jacksonville or college towns Gainesville and Tallahassee, are struggling. "There's still a pall over the entire state's real estate market ... and a lot of stress among bankers," PNC's Grant says.

Buyers for foreclosed properties exist, Grant adds, mostly in the form of vulture funds offering between 20- to 30-cents-on-the-dollar. Not surprisingly, banks have balked at those prices. "I wonder who is going to buy all of the real estate," he says. "The inventory is so large, it's going to take some time to liquidate it."

The wildcard, as it is across the country, is commercial real estate. Many Florida community banks have CRE exposure above 400 percent of their available risk-based capital, and with businesses trimming their space needs, there's real concern about whether the loans can be repaid.

Anecdotal evidence also suggests some serious slowdowns in the restaurant, retail and entertainment businesses and bankers, along with everyone else, are waiting to see how the crucial winter travel season goes. Staying even with last year's sluggish pace would be a success. CRE problems in the state "are really are just beginning to gain momentum," Kanas says. "There's no real end in sight yet for a bottom in those prices."

Many lenders have been quietly restructuring loans, lowering rates and extending payment terms in what Thomas calls a "delay and pray" strategy.

Most have cut costs and tightened lending policies, exacerbating the recession's effects. Seleski estimates that only about one-quarter of banks are actively seeking new business; the rest are hunkered down. "The mood is pretty dismal, but compared to a year ago, people at least seem to have plans," he says.

Stories abound of regulators ordering new appraisals for property and then forcing writedowns, all while requiring higher reserves and capital levels. Valenti says Florida Gulf was ordered to set aside $1.4 million in the third quarter, boosting its reserve ratio to 1.75 percent of loans. That's low compared to other banks, but above its past-due loan tally of 1.4 percent. "Once we're able to stop putting away so much in reserves, we'll see earnings increase quickly."

Capital is the key to riding out the storm. In total, 31 Florida banks have received $1.1 billion from the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program. The rest of the banks and thrifts have had to raise capital on their own, with varying levels of success.

In September, BankAtlantic Bancorp Inc. in Fort Lauderdale completed a $76 million rights offering, which helped it confront a third-quarter loss of $52.1 million announced weeks later. First United Bank in Boca Raton raised $80.5 million the same month, but is profitable and intends to "take advantage of the opportunities in the market," says Rick Maples, head of the financial institutions group for investment bank Stifel Nicolaus & Co., which helped on the transaction.

Maples says it's generally easier for a Florida bank to raise capital, "because the long-term demographics are perceived to be great." Still, when Bank of Florida Corp. in Naples postponed a $75 million public offering in November, it was an ominous sign. The $1.5 billion-asset company lost $78.1 million in the third quarter, and planned to use the bulk of the proceeds to fill a regulatory capital hole. CEO Mike McCullan blamed "recent negative industry announcements" and third-quarter losses by Florida banks for poisoning the capital-raising environment. "It appears that public investors are back on the sidelines," he says.

Clearly, there's more pain to come. When the state finally does emerge on the other side of the crisis, the competitive landscape will look markedly different from what it was a few years ago. There will be fewer banks, greater concentration and even more outside influence on the state's banking market.

Most expect more discipline, too - at least at the beginning. The Florida market has proven vulnerable to cycles in the past. While this downturn has been a doozy, Florida Gulf's Valenti says people's memories are short.

"Boom and bust is Florida's history," Valenti says. "Five years from now, we'll have forgotten all that's happened, and be right back to being idiots."

What Housing Recovery?

2010-02-09T19:48:00.000-08:00

RealtyTrac is out this morning with a year-end look at foreclosures. I think it is a terrible report.

There is the usual bad news from the worst hit areas:

1 in 8 homes in Vegas was in foreclosure. How is it that the MSM has convinced us that things have gotten better there? They have not.
Cali and Arizona are looking at ten percent default rates. And this has been going on for a few years now.
A substantial part of South Florida has one home in ten in default. In Marco Island/Naples the rate is 6.5%. That blows my mind. I know this area. It is deep pocket. At least it used to be.
The real shocker to me was Provo, Utah and Boise, ID. The default rates are up 100% from two years ago. This was not supposed to be happening in places like this.

There is a nationwide problem of defaults. The people in Boise are feeling the same pain as Stockton. Every time that a default happens it devalues other properties. I have real estate interests around the country and I can tell you that things are dead. There was a time when a buyer would look at a home and ask, “How big is the lot?” Today the question is, “Does the bank have title and are they desperate to sell?”.

There is not going to be a recovery in housing until the defaults have been stabilized at manageable levels. The broad economy is not going anywhere either. There is no plan on the table to stop what is surely coming. The government programs have delayed things by an average of nine months. That means that most of the millions of government sponsored ReFi’s from 2009 will blow up this year. We paid a bundle for those ReFi’s. They cost us last year, we will pay again for them this year. Little has been accomplished.

I know that there are many out there who will say, “Let price discovery rule!” You may be right. I don’t know anymore. We are paying a big price in time and treasure with what we have been doing. However, the policy of, “Let the chips fall” scares me. It is like a giant sucking noise. It is far away but getting closer.

The Getting Your Home on the Multiple Listing Service

2010-02-02T18:33:00.000-08:00

The Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is a database of available property in a given area. It allows potential buyers to search it given a set of criteria, and to check out houses for sale. It dramatically increases the exposure a home for sale can get, and is a great marketing tool.

The system is maintained by real estate associations or other agencies on behalf of real estate agents and realtors. They used to manage it themselves but it detracted from the important work of selling homes, so it was delegated to these agencies so it would be run more efficiently.

There are two ways to get your home on the MLS. The first is to use a real estate agent, broker or realtor. They will use the traditional methods of home selling, and adding the property to the MLS is one of the steps they will take to do that. Traditionally a real estate agent will sell your home for you for a percentage of the sale price. This involves quite a lot of work and more often than not, the agent earns every cent of that commission, but it is still a significant expense.

If you choose this route, the agent will compile all the literature and necessary paperwork for you to be able to sell the house. This will include photos, descriptions, information about the neighborhood, maybe a 3D-tour and anything else they see fit to produce to sell quickly, and for the right price.

As mentioned, the traditional real estate agent will work for a fee, approximately 6% of the sale price. Some agents will work for flat fees, or break that fee down into a combination of flat fee and commission. The market is competitive at the moment, there is a dearth of properties, and buyers out there, and agents are doing what they can to attract business.

The other method of getting listed on an MLS is to get a real estate agent to list it for you as an FSBO, or For Sale By Owner. This will involve a flat listing fee, but will be much lower than the traditional selling method. It does mean that you will have to prepare all the documentation and information yourself including, descriptions, photographs and any other marketing material.

FSBO costs significantly less than getting a real estate agent to sell your home, but it involves much more work. Not only do you have to prepare all your own literature, you also have to show it yourself, arrange your own open house, negotiate, and work with buyers agents and lawyers. If you think you can cope with this, then FSBO is something worth looking into, especially if money is tight.

So there are two ways to get your property listed on the MLS search tool. One involves quite a bit of money for a complete service where you don’t have to do much. The other doesn’t cost anywhere near as much money, but demands a lot more of your time and effort.

Naples company buys East Coast bank

2010-01-31T13:32:00.000-08:00

Florida’s a great place right now to launch a commercial bank, said the executive chairman of a Naples-based company that acquired a bank in Miami last week as the first step in that direction.

“I think it’s a profitable place,” Dan Healy of Bond Street Holdings said, noting that the real estate crisis has made it hard for many banks in the state to do much lending to small businesses.

“The local banks got in trouble on real estate so they’re not lending” and the larger banks already in the state often have issues of their own, he said. “Nobody is doing any commercial lending for small business. It’s unfortunate the banking institutions in Florida are in such disarray because of the real estate collapse.”

Bond Street has raised $440 million to use acquiring banks either by direct negotiations or through a deal brokered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Co.

It was an FDIC deal that resulted in Bond Street’s first acquisition, of Premier American Bank in Miami. That deal was announced Friday after business hours. The new bank is called Premier American Bank N.A.

The old Premier’s four branches, all on the East Coast, reopened Monday as part of the new Premier American, giving it an immediate foothold in South Florida.

On Sept. 30, the old Premier American Bank had $350.9 million in total assets and $326.3 million in total deposits.

Naples was chosen as headquarters because two executives with Bond Street — Chief Operating Officer Kent Ellert and Executive Vice President Ron Castro — already live there, said Healy, who splits his time between New York City and Jupiter.
Karen Dorway, president of Coral Gables-based BauerFinancial, which tracks banking information nationwide, said she hasn’t seen many investment groups pursuing a strategy like Bond Street’s but she expects to see more.

So far only about half a dozen new banks have been set up along the same lines, she said, but “You have a lot of investors who think it’s time to get into the banking market,” she said.

Naples Real Estate Overvalued?

2010-01-28T13:31:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Don't say we didn't warn you.

In January 2006, CNNMoney published a ranking of 299 U.S. housing markets, showing where home prices were most overvalued. Little was undervalued: Real estate was white-hot and prices were at or near what later proved to be their tops.

A total of 213 cities were overpriced, and Naples, Fla., was deemed the most insane, with 84% of homes valued over a fair market price, according to statistics compiled by National City Corp. and IHS Global Insight.

That finding so rankled the Naples Chamber of Commerce and area real estate agents that they hired economists to dispute the evaluation, according to Richard DeKaser, the real estate consultant who engineered the report for National City.

What a difference four years makes.

Today, Naples real estate sells at a 29% discount and the median home price is just $165,500, down from more than $390,000, according to the newly released 2010 report compiled by IHS Global Insight and PNC Financial Services (which bought National City).

Nationwide, just 87 markets are considered overvalued, and Naples is now the 15th most undervalued area. Nearly all markets -- 242 of 330 -- are considered priced below fair market.

Atlantic City, N.J., is now the most overvalued metro area in the nation. At 30.2% over fair market, it is the only city in the dangerous 30%-plus category. Almost at that cutoff is Wenachee, Wash., at 28.9%. The third most overpriced area is Ocean City, N.J.

The most undervalued market is Las Vegas, where homes sell for 41.4% below fair market, followed by Vero Beach, Fla. (-39.8%), Merced, Calif. (-37.7%), and Cape Coral, Fla. (-36.8%).

These judgments are determined by comparing median home prices, local interest rates, population densities and income, plus historical premiums or discounts that areas have exhibited over time.

San Diego, for example, with its great weather and outdoor lifestyle, usually carries a premium, while prices in cold Rust Belt cities such as Detroit generally sell for less than its income stats would suggest.

"At the risk of immodesty, I must say the whole model has performed too well to believe," said DeKaser.

"I've done some research that shows when you get a bubble, you don't just return to normalcy," he added. "You go past normalcy for a long period of undervaluation."

There are psychological reasons for that, of course. In frothy run-ups, builders make big profits and tend to over-produce, resulting in inventory overhangs that dampen price appreciation after the bubble bursts. Plus, people lose confidence.

And lenders, who were pushing out mortgages hand-over-fist four years ago are tight-fisted today, making it harder to get a mortgage and so reducing demand for homes.

The bottom line, at least for a few years, is that the average buyer should forget about home purchases as investments. The good news is that, long-term, their home values should appreciate.

The-CNN-Wire/Atlanta
TM & © 2009 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

Malibu Lakes sells for $31million

2010-01-28T12:38:00.000-08:00

NAPLES — A messy foreclosure lawsuit involving Malibu Lakes has come to an end.

The 356-unit lakefront apartment complex in North Naples has a new owner, Inland American Naples Malibu Lakes LLC. The buyers paid $31,019,500 for the development before it reached a courthouse auction.

“It was a negotiated deal. Somebody must have been negotiating directly with the lender,” said Ross McIntosh, a Naples real estate broker and founder of the Bidder’s Broker.

The sellers – Malibu Lakes 356 LLC – paid $83 million for the apartments in October 2005, hoping to convert them to condominiums. Ocean Bank, the lender, was owed more than $70 million.

“The lender took a pretty good haircut,” McIntosh said.

The foreclosure lawsuit was one of the largest seen in Collier County. When it last sold in 2005, Malibu Lakes at Tarpon Bay off Immokalee Road became one of the highest-priced conversion sales in the county.

“A select group of investors is typically given access to a list of the bank’s distressed assets,” McIntosh said. “So those negotiations tend to take place and the transactions tend to be consummated before the property actually gets to the courthouse steps.”

The former owner, Malibu Lakes 356 LLC, a limited liability company, was created to purchase the apartment complex. It was linked to east coast developer Jose Boschetti, a principal in Prestige Builders Partners, a Miami Lakes condo converter.

According to court records, the original loan with Ocean Bank was for $73,450,400 and the former owners failed to make monthly payments starting in November 2007. The lender filed its lawsuit on April 28, 2008.

In a counter-lawsuit, Malibu Lakes’ former owners alleged breach of contract and asked for declaratory relief, claiming the lender “acted in bad faith” when it foreclosed and delayed a planned sale as part of a liquidation agreement.

The bank’s attorneys tried to expedite the case, but it dragged on for more than 11⁄2 years. The case was formally dismissed Jan. 12.

The buyer, Inland American Real Estate Trust Inc., is based in Oak Brook, Ill. The public, non-traded REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) owns a diverse portfolio of commercial real estate including shopping centers, office buildings, student housing and hotel rooms.

The Inland American Group of Cos. Inc. has about 1,200 retail locations, 90 office buildings, 70 industrial properties, 11,000 apartment units and 15,000 hotel rooms.

Joe Cosenza, vice chairman of the Inland Real Estate Group Inc., said his company is always looking for projects like Malibu Lakes.

“Do I specifically look because they are in default or foreclosure? No. But if the opportunity comes to us and we really feel it smells like a really good deal for us, we’re on it,” he said.

Over the past 14 months, his group of companies has purchased about $2.5 billion in property nationwide.

On Dec. 16, Cosenza, who has a second home on Marco Island, said he was contacted about Malibu Lakes by an associate he’s done business with for more than 20 years. He was told the lender wanted to sell the apartments before the end of last year.

Within two days of the call, Cosenza said he had appraisers and engineers on the property. The deal closed Jan. 6.

“I love apartments to begin with,” Cosenza said. “I think those apartments were built just a little bit better than most apartment buildings.

The apartments have 9-foot ceilings, granite counter tops and full washers and dryers in every unit. They are also a good size and there is a good mix of one, two, three and four-bedroom units, Cosenza said.

“I could see why originally they were thought to be good as a conversion to condominiums,” he said. “That market, of course, went away.”

The units will remain rentals. Some improvements are planned, including roof repairs and painting all the outside of all the buildings.

“We’ll be better than any other management that they’ve had,” Cosenza said. “The management changed the day (the sale) closed.”